What Does Psalm 107:28 Mean?
Then they cry out to the LORD in their narrowness, and he brings them out of their narrow places.
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
Then they cry unto the LORD in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses.THE KEY
The verse names distress as a narrow place, then names the LORD’s answer as an exit.
THE MEANING
When your life narrows around you, your cry reaches the LORD. The pressure does not become your permanent boundary; the LORD brings you out from what constricts you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that distress is a closed space with no exit.
THE ROOT
בַּצַּר
ba-tsar
GROWS FROM
צָרַר
to bind, press in, or constrict
“narrowness” in this verse is ba-tsar. The Hebrew gives distress a shape: a narrow place that presses a person in. English “trouble” can sound abstract; this root lets the verse’s answer appear as release from confinement.
ALSO GROWS
tsarah: distress, trouble
צָרָה
This related word keeps the image of distress as being hemmed in.
metsar: a narrow place, a strait
מֵצַר
Psalm 118:5 uses this word for the place from which the speaker calls to the LORD.
יוֹצִיאֵם
yotsi’em
GROWS FROM
יָצָא
to go out or come forth; in this form, to bring someone out
“brings them out” in this verse is yotsi’em. The verb pictures an actual exit from the place that confines them. Deliverance here is movement out of distress, not merely comfort while remaining inside it.
ALSO GROWS
yetsi’ah: going out, an exit
יְצִיאָה
This noun makes the movement in the verse concrete: the LORD brings them to the outside.
yetzi’at Mitzrayim: the going out from Mitzrayim (Egypt, the two narrows)
יְצִיאַת מִצְרַיִם
The same verb family names the foundational movement out of constriction and bondage.
THE PATTERN
When distress closes in, a cry can be met with the LORD’s answer that brings a person out.
The aligned cry out, and the LORD hears, and snatches them out of all their narrow places.From the narrow place I call out to the LORD, and the LORD answers me in a wide place.And when Peter came to himself, he said, "Now I truly know that the LORD has sent his messenger, and has taken me out of the hand of Herod, and from all that the people of the Jews were waiting for."THE THREAD
From the narrow place I call out to the LORD, and the LORD answers me in a wide place.The Hebrew phrase מִן־הַמֵּצַר (min hametsar, “from the narrow place”) shares the צר (tsar, “narrow”) word family behind בַּצַּר (ba-tsar, “in the narrow place”) in this verse. Psalm 118:5 makes the movement explicit: the cry is answered by being set in a broad place.
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