za'aq

This is the loud, involuntary cry that a person makes when something is unbearable. It is not calm speech and not quiet prayer; it is the sound that breaks out of someone in pain, in danger, or under injustice, often at the top of the voice and often as a single sharp shout.

Its most frequent and most important use is the cry of a suffering people to God. Again and again Israel, crushed by oppressors or by their own trouble, cries out to the LORD, and the cry itself becomes the turning point: God hears it and sends rescue. The same verb covers the cry of a single person in grief or terror, the wail of a city or a whole land facing ruin, and even the cry of injustice that rises from wronged people, unpaid workers, or the very ground beneath a guilty owner.

The senses below are the same basic cry aimed in different directions: upward to God for help, outward in raw distress, or against a wrong that demands to be answered. What holds them together is volume and urgency. A whisper is never this word.

The same root is also used for the leader's side of the shout: not the cry of the one in trouble, but the call that summons others to come. A commander raises this call and an army gathers; a king issues it and a people is mustered; in a few places people who hear it are themselves rallied together by it.

The link to the basic meaning is the loud public call, but the direction is opposite. Here the shout reaches out to bring people in rather than rising up out of pain. English needs a different word for it: summon, muster, call out, or call together.