What Does Exodus 11:6 Mean?
And there shall be a great crying out through all the land of Egypt, the like of which has not been, nor will it be again.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And there shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there was none like it, nor shall be like it any more.THE KEY
The word translated “cry” is an outcry, making the grief audible as a collective appeal rather than a mere sound.
THE MEANING
The cry fills a whole land: grief is public and exceeds every comparison. The verse meets the reader now with suffering that cannot be reduced to a private feeling or a small event. Its language leaves devastation audible at full scale.
THE ROOT
צְעָקָה
tse'aqah
GROWS FROM
צעק
To cry out or call for help.
“crying out” in this verse is tse'aqah. English “cry” can sound like a noise or an emotion; צְעָקָה (tse’aqah, “outcry”) carries the sense of a voice raised from distress. The verse enlarges that voiced distress until it belongs to the whole land and admits no comparison.
ALSO GROWS
ṣāʿaq: To cry out or call for help.
צָעַק
The verb names the act behind the outcry: distress given a voice.
ṣōʿăqîm: Those crying out.
צֹעֲקִים
This participle makes the same root describe people in the act of raising their voices, linking the land-wide cry to those who utter it.
THE PATTERN
Across scripture, an outcry gives grief a public voice when loss exceeds ordinary speech.
And when Esau heard the words of his father, he cried out with a great and exceeding bitter cry, and said to his father, Bless me, even me also, O my father.Thus says the LORD, a voice was heard in Ramah, a wailing and a bitter weeping. Rachel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were gone.And they throw dust on their heads, and cry out, weeping and mourning, saying, Woe, woe, the great city, in which all who had ships on the sea grew rich by her costliness! For in one hour she has been emptied.THE THREAD
Then they cry out to the LORD in their narrowness, and he snatches them out of their narrow places.Psalm 107:6 uses וַיִּצְעֲקוּ (vayyitsʿaqû, “they cried out”), from the same root צעק (ṣ-ʿ-q, “cry out”). Exodus 11:6 lets that outcry fill a land with grief; the psalm pairs the same voiced distress with deliverance out of trouble.
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