Hebrew Word Study – Cry Out – Sa’aq – Sade, Ayin, Qop

Exodus 14:10b “And they were sore afraid and the children of Israel cried out unto the Lord.”  

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With the latest war in Israel, many Christians across the world are becoming sore afraid because the former leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal has declared a global jihad. With our immigration crisis thousands of unvetted immigrants crossing our borders from nations throughout the world and recent revelations that known terrorists have been among those entering and we have no idea where they are, there is the fear that an order will be given to awaken the “sleeper cells” and innocent citizens in our country will become victims of terrorist attacks.

The global jihad was declared on Friday, October 13th and today is the 14th of October and I do not hear any reports of terrorist attacks in this country. Yet, people are still living in fear. Conceal carry permits and sales of firearms have skyrocketed.  People who never dreamed of carrying a weapon are having second thoughts. With the defunding of police, the inability of local government to control the immigration crisis, and the distrust of our judicial system, fear is reaching an all-time high. 

Every major translation I have looked at will render the word tsa’aq as cry out. Now tsa’ak does mean to cry out but it also means to summon or to appeal. In its Semitic root, it has the idea of assembling together and being of one mind and purpose. Now translators have applied exegetical principles to deciding what English word to plug in here and the decision seems pretty obvious, the children of Israel were afraid so naturally they would cry out. 

There are a couple of things that bother me about this rendering, however. In 

English, we have adjectives whose comparative and superlatives are irregular. For instance, we have good-positive, better-comparative, and best-superlative. In Hebrew you do not have these forms, however, with verbs, you do have certain forms which determine intensity.  The simple Qal would be like your positive, the Piel would be your comparative and the addition of a paragogic could suggest the superlative. 

Tsa’aq suggests forms of intensity. You could simply call out or summon, you could appeal or you could cry out. All are usages for the word tsa’aq. So how do you know which word to use? You could use an exegetical approach and say the people were sore and afraid so that they would naturally cry out, that is you would use the most intensive form.  However, the word is in a simple Qal form and grammatically you should use its simplest form which is to summon and make a request. In defense of the exegetical approach, they cried out to God then went to Moses belly aching that God sent them out to die. So obviously they must have crying and weeping and calling out to God. 

There is another grammatical issue to consider. The word has an imperfect inflection. In English, we would render that as, “They will cry out to God.” This makes no sense in the passage so again you must resort to an exegetical approach and decide to put it in a past tense even if it is grammatically imperfect.  

Even though this is entirely appropriate in Hebrew as no tense it is only inferred by the context. However, one must still ask why Scripture uses this verbal inflection in the first place. Maybe Scripture is trying to show something much deeper than what we see on the surface.  If we kept this in a Qal imperfect form the only way to render this in the English is: Because they were sore afraid, they would have assembled themselves to summon God. 

Being in an imperfect form they would never have gotten around to “crying out to God” or making an appeal to God, instead, they went to Moses and started to belly ache. Well, that is really stretching the grammar here, for if they did not cry out to God, there would be something to indicate that they did not cry out to God, like maybe a lo’ somewhere in this verse.

The fact is that they most likely cried out to God, got no response, and then went complaining to Moses. Bravo, they did get together to summon God, but they really didn’t tsa’aq.  

When you examine this tsa’aq more deeply you find it has the idea of looking beyond the circumstances and seeing the ultimate will of God. That this involves humbling yourself to God and demonstrating a willingness to make peace with a change. We may cry out for peace but are we willing to humble and surrender ourselves to His will, looking beyond our present circumstances to where that is taking us and making peace with any change that will come as a result? Perhaps the children of Israel did cry out to God but it was not in surrender to God’s Divine purposes. Tsa’aq also carries a shadow, which is a blindness to the unholy tendencies embodied in that cry.  When Israel cried out in its shadow form, there was no response from God, so they complained to Moses. 

Times we cry out to God and cry out to God and there is no response. We end up like Israel and start to bellyache that God doesn’t care when in reality we are crying out in
tsa’aq’s shadow and have not submitted ourselves to God and accepted whatever change may come from God’s response.

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