Hebrew Word Study – Trouble – Tsarar   צָרַר    Tsade Resh Resh

Psalms 119:143: “Trouble and anguish have taken hold on me: yet thy commandments are my delights.”

I Thessalonians 3:7: “Therefore, brethren, we were comforted over you in all our affliction and distress by your faith:”

Trouble, anguish, affliction, and distress are all the same thing according to many people. It simply spells misery, a state of great distress. Yet, in Psalms 119:143, trouble and anguish are two different words. Trouble is the word tsarar in its root form, and anguish is the root word tsuq.  

Tsarar has the idea of compression, pressing together, squeezing, or even binding together. Trouble creates that sense of being pressured, like having the life squeezed out of you. You have no place to go to or run to, you feel trapped. Tsuq is rendered as anguish and is really very similar, it has the idea of being pressured or oppressed. The difference between tsarar and tsug is that if you experience tsarar it is the feeling of being trapped or imprisoned, and tsug is having someone oppress you. 

You might recall when you were in grammar school learning how to write.  Many teachers used what was called the Palmer method, which is like trying to write with your pen at the end of a stick. You were then instructed by the teacher to make a series of “L’s” in cursive. She demonstrated by making a series of beautiful little oval-type loops on the blackboard, nicely tied together. Tsarar is like having to duplicate what your teacher was doing, making each loop in the cursive “L” the same size and width.  When you tried to do it, your loops ended up with a variety of sizes and widths.  All this created in you tsarar, a sense of being trapped in a body which cannot make uniform loops, and the lack of that ability created stress and tension.  This suddenly turned to tsug when the teacher walks up behind you and looks over your shoulder. She doesn’t say anything except maybe gives a little sigh.  Suddenly, your different-sized and width loops begin to resemble a sprung main spring on a clock. Eventually, the teacher moves on to another student, at which time you move from tsug back to tsarar. 

You find absolutely no delight when you are going through times of tsarar and tsug. The word delight that is used in Psalms 119:143 is sha’eshu’a from the root word sha’a, which is stroking or caring. It is sort of like the feeling you get when you are petting your dog Sparky. It is a sense of peace and contentment. It is like moving from a point of tsarar, pressured, imprisonment, and tsug being oppressed to feeling free, calm, relaxed, with not a care in the world. 

This sense of sha’a comes from God’s commandments. Commandment is the word mitsvah from the root word tsavah, which means to delegate authority while retaining control. The word is used in modern Hebrew for good deeds. Keeping the commandments is are good deed.  But it is more than that. There is a sign on a church lawn that says: “God gave ten commandments, no ten suggestions.”  Actually, they are suggestions.  A command is an order to fulfill a purpose beyond the will of one who is given the command.  That is not tsavah, nor is it the idea behind the commandments if God. 

God created the human creature to experience joy and sorrow, happiness and sadness.  Then he gave each of us an instruction manual on how to make this human creature work so that he or she can experience joy and happiness. This manual gives a list of mitzvahs that, if we follow them, we will know joy and happiness. If we refuse to follow them, it will lead to sorrow and sadness. The so-called commands of God are meant to bring us joy, not tsarar or tsug. It is God telling us what will bring joy and delight to His heart, and of course, when we bring pleasure to God, we will feel that pleasure, and it will bring us pleasure or delight. 

There is something very interesting about the three key words in this verse in Psalms 119:143. The words tsarar for trouble, tsug for anguish, and tsavah for command all begin with the letter  Tsade, the eighteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet.  The word tsade means a snare or trap, or to imprison. Both trouble and anguish are a snare that traps you and imprisons you.  A command can imprison you in a good way, as keeping the commands of God will bind you to Him. The Jewish sages also teach that the tsade is shaped like a man kneeling in prayer and humility. God can use tsarar, tsug, and tsavah to humble you and drive you to your knees in prayer. 

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