What Does Psalm 18:6 Mean in the King James?
In my distress I called upon the LORD, and cried unto my God: he heard my voice out of his temple, and my cry came before him, even into his ears.
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 cry rises from narrowness straight into the hearing of God.
THE MEANING
Your distress does not put you beyond reach: your call and your plea are already before God. The verse pictures hearing as nearness, your voice comes from God’s temple into God’s ears. It holds the raw cry and its reception in the same moment.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that distress has made you unreachable or that your cry is absent from God’s attention.
THE ROOT
בַּצַּר
ba-tsar
GROWS FROM
צרר
ts-r-r
To bind, confine, or press into a narrow space.
The verse’s word for distress carries the sense of constriction, not only pain. Its consonants echo מִצְרַיִם (Mitzrayim, Egypt/the two narrows), placing this personal cry within Scripture’s larger movement from narrowness toward spaciousness.
ALSO GROWS
tsarah: Trouble or adversity; distress.
צָרָה
This branch names trouble itself with the image of being pressed into a narrow place.
metzar: A narrow or confined place; a strait.
מֵצַר
It makes the spatial image in “distress” visible: the speaker is in a narrow place.
אֲשַׁוֵּעַ
ashavvea
GROWS FROM
שוע
sh-w-ʿ
To cry out for help or plead for aid.
English sets “cried” beside “my cry,” but Hebrew repeats one root in verb and noun forms. The urgency is vocal and explicit: the verse names a plea for help, not merely an inward feeling.
ALSO GROWS
shav'ah: A plea or cry for help.
שַׁוְעָה
This noun is the root’s matching form for the cry that comes before God.
veshav'ati: The speaker’s cry or plea for help.
וְשַׁוְעָתִי
The verse repeats the root as both the act of crying out and the cry itself.
יִשְׁמַע
yishma
GROWS FROM
שמע
sh-m-ʿ
To hear, listen, or heed.
“heard” in this verse is yishma. The line does more than say the sound exists: it places the voice before God and names the receiving as hearing. Its closing image, “into his ears,” makes the root’s sense of attentive listening almost bodily.
ALSO GROWS
shema: Hear; listen with responsiveness.
שְׁמַע
This familiar form shows how the root can carry attentive hearing, with response implied by context.
shomea: A hearer or listener.
שֹׁמֵעַ
This branch makes the verse’s image of God as the one who receives the cry concrete.
THE PATTERN
A cry uttered in distress reaches God’s hearing before the text describes any reply.
The righteous cry, and the LORD heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles.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;Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.THE THREAD
I called upon the LORD in distress: the LORD answered me, and set me in a large place.The phrase בַּצַּר (ba-tsar, in narrowness/distress) in Psalm 18:6 echoes מֵצַר (metzar, a narrow place/distress) here. Psalm 118 then carries the cry into spaciousness: the LORD answers and sets the speaker in a large place.
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