What Does Psalm 107:19 Mean in the King James?
Then they cry unto the LORD in their trouble, and he saveth 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 names distress as constriction, then defines rescue as being carried out of it.
THE MEANING
When trouble closes around you and distress presses in, your cry reaches the LORD. Deliverance carries you out from under that pressure, opening a way beyond the narrow place.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse dissolves the belief that a cry from inside trouble meets only silence: the trouble is real, but it is not the final boundary.
THE ROOT
בַּצַּר
batsar
GROWS FROM
צָרַר
tsarar
Bind, press in, make narrow.
בַּצַּר (batsar, in the narrow place) is paired with מְצוּקוֹתֵיהֶם (metsuqoteihem, their pressures or distresses): trouble is pictured as enclosure, not just a vague bad feeling. The verse’s answer is movement out of that enclosure.
ALSO GROWS
tsar: Narrow, tight
צַר
It reveals the constriction inside the word translated “trouble.”
tsarah: Distress, trouble
צָרָה
The same root’s branch names the felt pressure of being in a narrow place.
Mitzrayim: Egypt; the two narrows
מִצְרַיִם
Its name carries the image of constriction into the Bible’s recurring arc from narrowness toward spaciousness.
יוֹשִׁיעֵם
yoshi'em
GROWS FROM
ישע
y-sh-ʿ
Yasha: deliver, bring out from constriction into spaciousness.
“saveth” in this verse is yoshi'em. The LORD’s response is not merely relief within the pressure; the word carries the sense of being brought out. The verse moves from the narrow place toward room to live.
ALSO GROWS
yeshuah: Deliverance
יְשׁוּעָה
The same root names the way out that the verse says the LORD gives.
moshia: Deliverer
מוֹשִׁיעַ
This branch names the one who brings deliverance, matching the LORD’s action in the verse.
THE PATTERN
When pressure narrows life to a cry, deliverance answers by opening a way out.
And the LORD said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows;The righteous cry, and the LORD heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles.Who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver: in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us;THE THREAD
In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them, and carried them all the days of old.The Hebrew word translated “saved” here comes from the same yasha root as “saveth” in Psalm 107:19. Both verses place deliverance within affliction and describe being brought out from it.
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