What Does Psalm 107:13 Mean in the King James?
Then they cried unto the LORD in their trouble, and he saved them out of their distresses.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The verse places a cry inside narrowness and answers it with deliverance out of the pressure.
THE MEANING
When trouble narrows your way, your cry reaches the LORD from inside it. Deliverance meets you there and brings you out from what presses you in.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that distress means you are abandoned and must find your own way out.
THE ROOT
בַּצַּר
batsar
GROWS FROM
צרר
To bind, confine, or press in; צַר (tsar) means narrow.
The word translated “trouble” carries the sense of being hemmed into a narrow place. The verse’s distress is not only a feeling; it is pressure around a life, and the cry rises from within that pressure.
ALSO GROWS
tsarah: Distress, adversity.
צָרָה
This branch shows trouble as a constricting condition, echoing the narrowness named in the verse.
metsar: A narrow place, a strait.
מֵצַר
Psalm 118:5 uses this word for distress and places it beside a “large place,” making the movement out of narrowness visible.
יוֹשִׁיעֵם
yoshi’em
GROWS FROM
ישע
To deliver, rescue, and bring into safety.
“saved” in this verse is yoshi’em. The verb names deliverance from what holds a person in danger. Its word-family includes both the plea for deliverance and deliverance itself, joining the cry and its answer in a shared root.
ALSO GROWS
yeshuah: Deliverance.
יְשׁוּעָה
The noun names what the LORD brings about in this verse: deliverance from what presses in.
hoshi’a: Deliver! A plea for rescue.
הוֹשִׁיעָה
This form appears in the plea “Hosanna”; the word-family of the answer also gives voice to a cry for help.
Yeshua: A name formed from the root of deliverance.
יֵשׁוּעַ
The name carries the nature of the root: deliverance is not merely an event but a character expressed through the name.
THE PATTERN
A cry from a constricted place is met with deliverance.
The righteous cry, and the LORD heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles.And it shall be for a sign and for a witness unto the LORD of hosts in the land of Egypt: for they shall cry unto the LORD because of the oppressors, and he shall send them a saviour, and a great one, and he shall deliver them.For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.THE THREAD
I called upon the LORD in distress: the LORD answered me, and set me in a large place.The word translated “trouble” here comes from tsar, “narrow”; Psalm 118:5 uses the related word metsar for a narrow place. There the answer opens into a “large place,” revealing the movement from constriction to spaciousness.
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