StrongerBible

yatsar

יָצַר

HebrewH3334“distressed, too narrow, ...”

Appears 10 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 32:7(8)Jdg 2:15Jdg 10:91Sa 30:62Sa 13:2Neh 9:27Job 18:7Job 20:22Pro 4:12Isa 49:19
Root family
Word studyyah-TSAHRverb

What yatsar means

to be too tight: of a space, too small for what must fit in it; of a person, squeezed into a corner and so hard pressed

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

At its root this verb is about measurement, not mood. Something is too small for what has to fit inside it: a ruined city that cannot hold the crowds coming home, a stride with no room to lengthen. Hebrew then applies the very same verb to people, and it does so in a strikingly indirect way. The text does not say that a person feels tight; it says that things got tight for him. Trouble is something that closes in from outside, the way walls narrow on a road.

That is why the word turns up at some of the worst moments in Israel's story, always with the same shape:

  • Jacob hears that Esau is coming with four hundred men (Genesis 32:7)
  • Israel finds every campaign turning against it (Judges 2:15)
  • David's own men start talking about stoning him (1 Samuel 30:6)

Once the walls close in from the inside instead: Amnon is so hemmed in by his craving for Tamar that he makes himself ill (2 Samuel 13:2).

Because the picture is spatial, it runs both ways, and that is what keeps it from being a mere synonym for worry. Room can be taken away, and room can be given back. Nehemiah's prayer uses the verb for what hostile neighbors did to Israel, pressing them in on every side (Nehemiah 9:27), while Isaiah promises Zion the happiest possible version of the same problem: the ruined land will run short of space, because too many people are coming home (Isaiah 49:19). Proverbs makes it a promise about walking, that wisdom keeps the path wide enough that your stride is never cramped (Proverbs 4:12).

Hebrew built a whole family of words on this image of narrowness, and the nearest of them is the verb "to press hard" (צָרַר), which covers both being squeezed and doing the squeezing.

Nuances

1aof a place: too small to hold what must fit into it
TranslatabilityApproximate
Isa 49:19
1bof someone's steps or path: hemmed in, with no room to move freely
Job 18:7Pro 4:12
1cof a person: in a tight spot, hard pressed, in distress
Gen 32:7(8)Jdg 2:15Jdg 10:91Sa 30:62Sa 13:2Job 20:22
1dto press someone else hard: to be the one closing in and leaving no room
TranslatabilityApproximate
Neh 9:27

What scholars say about yatsar

The standard lexica are agreed on the sense but not on the derivation. BDB treats יָצַר II "be straitened, in distress" as a byform of צרר, listing it with the impersonal construction (וַיֵּצֶר לְ + person) that accounts for most occurrences; HALOT gives it its own entry, glossing it "to be cramped, be narrow" with the derived nuance "to be in dire straits," and DCH likewise keeps יצר II separate from יצר I "to form." Because the two roots are homographic in the consonantal text, the morphological tagging rather than the spelling decides each occurrence, and all ten forms here are parsed to יצר II. The literal spatial use survives in Isaiah 49:19 (Zion too small for its returning population) and in the two Job/Proverbs lines on constricted steps (Job 18:7; Proverbs 4:12), which Clines treats as a stock image of a life narrowed to nothing; the impersonal idiom carries the remainder. Nehemiah 9:27 is the sole causative form and sits inside a deliberate cluster of the same semantic field (צָרֵיהֶם, צָרָתָם), which is why commentators read it as an intentional play on the shared root rather than a stray causative. 2 Samuel 13:2 is the semantically odd case, applying the idiom to frustrated desire rather than external threat; McCarter and others handle it under the ordinary distress idiom rather than positing a separate nuance.

Sources

  • HALOT, s.v. יצר IIlexicon
  • BDB, s.v. יָצַר IIlexicon
  • DCH, s.v. יצר IIlexicon
  • David J. A. Clines, Job 1-20, Word Biblical Commentary 17 (Dallas: Word, 1989)commentary
  • P. Kyle McCarter, II Samuel, Anchor Bible 9 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984)commentary
  • John Goldingay and David Payne, Isaiah 40-55, International Critical Commentary (London: T&T Clark, 2006)commentary

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of יָצַר

qal consecutive-imperfect 3ms

וַיֵּצֶר

Gen 32:7, Jdg 2:15, 2Sa 13:2

qal consecutive-imperfect 3fs

וַתֵּצֶר

Jdg 10:9, 1Sa 30:6

qal imperfect 3ms

יֵצֶר, יֵצַר

Job 20:22, Pro 4:12

hiphil consecutive-imperfect 3mp

וַיָּצֵרוּ

Neh 9:27

qal imperfect 2fs

תֵּצְרִי

Isa 49:19

qal imperfect 3mp

יֵצְרוּ

Job 18:7