צָעַק
to cry out
‘to cry out’ is one of 4 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”). Here: ‘cry’
- Niphal
- Usually the simple passive or reflexive of the Qal (“he was written”). Here: ‘be summoned’
- Hiphil
- The causative active stem (“he caused / brought about”). Here: ‘call together’
- Piel
- An intensive or resultative active stem.
Form
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Imperative
- A direct command (“write!”).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Cohortative
- A first-person volitional form expressing wish or resolve (“let me / let us write”).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Infinitive Absolute
- An unbound verbal noun, often intensifying or standing in for a finite verb.
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Every verse where H6817 appears in the Book of Lamentations — 1 distinct verse. Click any verse to open its interlinear word-by-word view. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context — . Each verse’s Hebrew form is shown with its reference; the English is not keyword-highlighted, since the data carries no word-level English alignment. Use “Compare translations” on any verse to read it across multiple English versions. This concordance covers the Hebrew Bible; Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) occurrences are not indexed here.
Lamentations
About this entry
At a glance — auto-summarized from this page’s data, not written by a person. Every figure links to its source below. This summary describes the numbers; it doesn’t interpret them.
“to cry out” is the headline sense of the Hebrew verb צעק (tsâʻaq). The King James Version usually renders it “cried,” while modern versions prefer “cried out” (Berean Standard Bible) and “and” (unfoldingWord Literal Text) — see the renderings breakdown. With 53 verses in 16 books, it is a moderately common word in the Hebrew Bible. Scripture first uses it in Genesis 4:10. As a verb its force shifts by stem, across 4 stems (Qal, Niphal, and more). The sections below give every sense, occurrence, and version rendering.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H6817 catalogs a Hebrew word from the Hebrew Old Testament.
These counts are not copied from any lexicon or concordance. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged Hebrew Old Testament. What Lemma adds →
- 53
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 53 distinct verses.
- 16 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 16 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #686
- by frequency
- Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 686 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 53 occurrences in the concordance →
By section of the Old Testament
By traditional corpus
Conventional, traditional groupings — biblical authorship is debated, so this is a traditional corpus grouping, not an authorship claim. Each share is this word’s portion of its verses in that division of the Hebrew canon. Each figure is a share of the word’s 53 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 25 verses · 47%
- Torah (Pentateuch) 18 verses · 34%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 10 verses · 19%
How translations render this word
Counts come from each version’s own published word-to-Strong’s tagging or interlinear alignment — an approximate guide to how each version renders this word, not a word-level alignment the data otherwise carries. Because each total is that version’s own tagged count, the per-version totals vary from one another and need not match the appearance or distinct-verse counts above. These counts may also differ from a printed concordance because Lemma counts each distinctly tagged rendering and does not collapse phrase taggings into a single head-word total. This is a fixed set of word-tagged versions (KJV, ASV, BSB, ULT) and does not change with the reading translation you choose elsewhere. Each version’s license is shown beside its name below (and on Sources).
- King James Version: Cried 11×, He cried 5×, Cry 4×
- American Standard Version: Cried 11×, Were gathered together 5×, Cry 4×
- Berean Standard Bible: Cried out 14×, Cry out 6×, They cried out 4×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: And 9×, Cried out 9×, Cry out 6×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H6817 across 55 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 23 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H6817 across 56 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 22 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H6817 across 55 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 21 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H6817 across 70 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus other, less common renderings. Plus 18 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
10 senses and sub-senses in the full BDB
Hebrew verbs can shift meaning by stem (binyan): Qal is the basic action, Niphal is often passive or reflexive, Piel often intensifies or makes it factitive, and Hiphil is typically causative. The senses below are grouped under the stem BDB assigns to each.
What do BDB’s symbols mean?
BDB uses these scholarly abbreviations:
| Symbol | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 𝔊 | the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation, LXX) |
| 𝔙 | the Vulgate (the Latin translation) |
| 𝔖 | the Syriac version (the Peshitta) |
| 𝔗 | the Targum (the Aramaic translation) |
| ψ | the Psalms |
| √ | root (the underlying root or stem) |
| ‖ | parallel passage (a synonymous or contrasted parallel) |
| † | the dagger: every passage where the word occurs is cited |
The 10 senses and sub-senses the full Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency), with BDB’s own verbatim wording and sub-sense lettering. Shown in Hebrew script with BDB’s own scholarly abbreviations. The condensed entry is in the Lexicon Entry tab. See also the Forms in the corpus table below.
Qal
- Pf. 3 ms. צ׳ 1 K 20:39 La 2:18, 3 fs. צָֽעֲקָה Dt 22:24 +, etc.; Impf. יִצְעַק Ex 23:22 +, etc.; Imv. fs. וְצַעֲקִי Je 22:20, וּצֳעָ֑קִי v 20; fpl. צְעַקְנָה 49:3; Inf. abs. צָעֹק Ex 22:22; cstr. לִצְעֹק 2 K 8:3; Pt. fs. abs. צֹעֶ֫קֶת 2 K 8:5; mpl. צֹעֲקִים Gn 4:10; Ex 5:8;— e.g. 1 Kings 20:39
- 1. cry, cry out, for help, usually c. אֶל pers.;—
- a. unto man Gn 41:55 (E; + ל rei), Nu 11:3 (JE), 1 K 20:39 2 K 6:26; 8:3 (+ אֶל rei), v 5 (+ עַל rei); sq. אמר Ex 5:15 (J), 2 K 4:1 and (אֶל pers. om.) Ex 5:8 (J), 2 K 4:40; 6:5. e.g. Genesis 41:55
- b. especially unto י׳: Gn 4:10; Ex 8:3 (+ עַל־דְּבַר rei), 14:10, 15; 15:25; 17:4; 22:22 (צָעֹק יִצְעַק), v 26 Nu 12:13; 20:16 Jos 24:7 (all JE), Ju 4:3; 10:12; Dt 26:7; Is 19:20 (+ מִפְּנֵי rei), La 2:18; Ne 9:27 ψ 107:6, 28; קוֹלִי אֶל־א׳ וְאֶצְעָ֑קָה 77:2, cf. 34:18; c. לי׳ 2 Ch 13:14, נֶגְדֶּ֑ךָ ψ 88:2. e.g. Genesis 4:10
- c. cry unto (אֶל) idol Is 46:7. e.g. Isaiah 46:7
- 2. abs. cry, cry out, in distress, need;—Gn 27:34 (J; c. acc. cogn.), Dt 22:24, 27; Is 33:7 (‖ בָּכָה), 65:14 (‖ הֵילִיל, opp. רָנַן; c. מִן rei), Je 22:20(×2) (‖ נָתַן קוֹל), 49:3 (‖ הֵילִיל), Jb 35:12; c. obj. חָמָס Jb 19:7 (‖ אֲשַׁוַּע). e.g. Genesis 27:34
- 3. make outcry, clamour, Is 42:2 (+ יִשָּׂא, יַשְׁמִיעַ קוֹלוֹ). e.g. Isaiah 42:2
Niphal
- be summoned (i.e. to arms), abs.; Impf. 3 ms. וַיִּצָּעֵק Ju 7:23, 24; 12:1, so 3 mpl. וַיִּצֶּעֲקוּ 10:17; 2 K 3:21, sq. אַחֲרֵי שָׁאוּל + acc. loc. 1 S 13:4. e.g. Judges 7:23
Piel
- Pt. מְצַעֵק cry aloud, in grief, 2 K 2:12. e.g. 2 Kings 2:12
Hiphil
- call together וַיַּצְעֵק אֶת־הָעָם אֶל־י׳ הַמִּצְפָּה 1 S 10:17. e.g. 1 Samuel 10:17
Senses from the full Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon (Brown, Driver, Briggs; Oxford 1906 — public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). Full attribution on Sources.
Word origin
vb. cry, cry out, call (‖זָעַק; NH id.; Arabic صَعَقَ, perhaps orig. sound as thunder, cf. صَاعِقَةٌ thunderbolt, صَعِقَ bellow (of bull));—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Origin: a primitive root
Jastrow Dictionary
A second Hebrew/Aramaic lexicon for comparison, covering Aramaic and post-biblical (Talmudic, Targumic, Midrashic) usage that the biblical-Hebrew BDB does not. Matched by lemma rather than by Strong’s number, so a lemma may carry more than one Jastrow headword (shown separately below), and the entries cover usage well beyond the Bible.
צָעַק
- to cry; (cmp. צָוַוח) to complain. Mekh. Mishp. s. 18 (ref. to Ex. XXII, 22) יכול כל זמן שהוא צוֹעֵק וכ׳ lest you may think, when he cries, I hear him (take up his cause), and when he does not cry, I do not &c. B. Kam. 93ᵃ אוי לו לצוֹעֵק … הנִצְעָק woe to him who cries (prays for divine judgment to come down upon his neighbor) more than to him who is cried against. Ib. אחד לצועק ואחד לנצעק וכ׳ Ms. M. both are included (in Ex. l. c.) as deserving divine punishment, the crier and he who is cried against, only that they (in heaven) hasten to attend to the crier first &c. (differ. vers. quoted in Tosaf.). B. Mets. 75ᵇ שלשה צוֹעֲקִין ואינן נענין three persons cry in distress, and are not answered (because they are themselves to blame for their sufferings). Midr. Till. to Ps. XXXIV והיו צוֹצֲקוֹת שתיהן וכ׳ and both of them screamed and raged within &c. Men. 53ᵇ; a. fr. e.g. Exodus 22:22
- to be complained of, v. supra.
צְעֵק
- Targ. Josh. XXIV, 7. Targ. Jud. IV, 3.
A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (Marcus Jastrow; London, Luzac, 1903) — Public Domain. Digitized via Sefaria. Digitized via Sefaria. Full attribution on Sources.
Forms in the corpus
The 46 distinct written forms H6817 takes in the Hebrew Bible, most frequent first — each parse links to that stem’s occurrences in the concordance. Hebrew forms include their vowel points and cantillation, so a single lemma takes many written forms.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H6817, grouped by Strong’s listed origin. These share a root / origin per the lexicon — not necessarily a shared meaning. Each links to that word’s own entry.
Derived from this word
Compare all same-root words → They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 50 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 53 Hebrew verses it occurs in. You can read those verses in Greek by switching the Old Testament edition to the Septuagint.
Read these verses in the Septuagint
- Genesis 4:10
- Exodus 5:8
- Numbers 11:2
- Deuteronomy 22:24
- Joshua 24:7
- Judges 4:3
- 1 Samuel 10:17
- 2 Kings 2:12
- 2 Chronicles 13:14
- Job 19:7
- Psalms 34:17
- Isaiah 19:20
This is a verse-level parallel only — the same verses exist in both the Hebrew and Greek Old Testaments. No word-level Hebrew↔Greek correspondence is claimed: the data carries no such alignment, so no Greek word is shown as this Hebrew word’s translation. Coverage is not total — the Septuagint omits the deuterocanon and renumbers the Psalms, so some Hebrew verses have no direct Greek parallel.
