to be bitter, or to make bitter: the sharp taste of gall stretched to cover grief, hardship, and fierce anger
The word begins in the mouth. Its root sense is the sharp, unpleasant taste of something like gall or brackish water, a drink that makes a person recoil. From that physical starting point Hebrew stretches the word across the whole of hard experience, because the body registers grief and suffering much as the tongue registers a bitter taste.
So one word can carry a wide range:
- the plain taste of something bitter, as when strong drink turns sour to the one drinking it;
- the inner ache of grief, when a person is "bitter of soul" and worn down by loss;
- the act of making someone else's life bitter, as slave drivers, and even God, are said to do;
- weeping and mourning at their most intense; and
- a fury that a person works up inside until it boils over into attack.
In the story of Israel this bitterness follows the shape of the covenant. The Egyptians made the people's lives bitter in slavery; the first water in the desert was too bitter to drink until God sweetened it; and both Naomi and Job, crushed by loss, turn the word into an accusation, saying that God himself has made their lives bitter. The near-twin verb מרה, "to rebel," sits close by and is easily confused with it, and the Greek Old Testament reached for a single word, πικραίνω, to cover much of this same ground.