dry, waterless land: parched, sun-baked ground where nothing grows, and the drought that leaves it so.
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
This word names land defined by one thing: it has no water. Its ground is baked hard and lifeless, the very opposite of anything green or watered, and to be caught in it is to be in danger of dying of thirst.
The prophets and poets almost always set it beside other words for empty country, and each pairing shows what makes this one distinct:
alongside מִדְבָּר, the open grazing backcountry, it adds that the ground is not merely unsettled but bone dry;
alongside עֲרָבָה, the flat rift-valley plain, it names the parched quality rather than the shape of the land;
alongside שְׁמָמָה, a place laid waste, it points to natural, sun-struck dryness rather than ruin left behind by an army.
Most often it is a place a person is lost in, a land of thirst where צָמָא is the constant threat. Once, in Job, it is not a place at all but the drought itself, the heat that snatches away the melted snow. And in the prophets it becomes a lever of both hope and warning: God can turn this parched ground into pools of water, or turn a proud city into land as dry as this.
Nuances
1aa parched, waterless place: dry ground, a land of thirst, a desert.
in Hebrew it always means ground parched for lack of water, bound up with thirst and barrenness.Psa 63:1Isa 41:18
Both
both describe ground that is dry rather than covered with water.Psa 107:35
Only dry land
in English "dry land" most often means simply the ground as opposed to the sea, as when the waters are gathered and dry land appears; this word never carries that meaning.
the word stresses the waterless, parched character of the place, not merely that it is unpopulated.Jer 50:12Zep 2:13
Both
both name a barren, unlivable stretch of country.Jer 51:43
Only desert
English "desert" tends to call up sand dunes or a specific climate; the Hebrew is about the absence of water, whatever the terrain looks like.
“parched land”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“drought”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How tsiyyah differs from similar Hebrew words
מִדְבָּרthe open, uninhabited backcountry where flocks are driven to graze. It can hold some pasture and seasonal water, while this word insists specifically on dryness and the lack of it.
Insists on the total absence of water, so it is paired with thirst and named as the land "where no water is."Psa 63:1Psa 105:41
Describes a parched condition of the ground rather than a mapped territory, and so drives figures of drought and of lifelessness where nothing should grow.Isa 53:2Job 24:19
Both
Both name the desolate waste that stands opposite settled, watered land, and the prophets set them in poetic parallel as the same barrenness that salvation reverses into pools and springs.Isa 41:18
Both stand together for the trackless wasteland of judgment, the fate a flourishing people or city is reduced to.Jer 50:12Zep 2:13
Names the shepherd's backcountry, the uninhabited grazing land where flocks are driven out to pasture, so it can hold vegetation and even a spring of water rather than being defined by drought.Exo 3:1Gen 16:7
Marks a vast bounded region with named sub-districts, the itinerary space through which Israel journeyed and where it camped for forty years.Num 1:1Num 10:12
עֲרָבָהthe flat, arid rift-valley plain (also a place name, the Arabah). It names the shape and setting of the land, while this word names its parched, waterless quality.
Points to the shape and lay of the ground, a wide flat plain or valley floor, level enough to march an army across or run a road through.Num 22:1Isa 40:3
Often fixes a definite place on the map, a named lowland such as the "plains of Moab" or the "plains of Jericho," or the long rift valley itself.Jos 4:13Deu 3:17
שְׁמָמָהa place laid waste and left desolate, often by judgment or war. This word points instead to natural, sun-baked dryness, the land's own aridity.
names a naturally waterless, sun-parched land where thirst is the affliction, a fact of climate rather than a verdict passed on a peoplePsa 63:1Job 24:19
the dryness can be reversed: God turns the parched ground into pools and springs, and the desert bloomsPsa 107:35Isa 41:18Isa 35:1
Both
both name a land empty of people and water, and the two stand side by side in one phrase to picture a single stretch of wastelandJol 2:20Zep 2:13
the emptying of a land or city as the sentence of judgment, its inhabitants cut off by sword and exileLev 26:33Jer 4:27Ezk 33:28
the ruin of what was once built and lived in: cities become heaps and dwellings are left with no one passing throughJer 9:11Ezk 6:14Mic 1:7
צָמָאthe thirst a person suffers, the craving for water. This word is the parched land that produces that thirst, a condition of the ground rather than the body.
Names the parched land itself: the dry ground, desert, or wilderness where no water flows. It describes a place, not a feeling.Psa 63:1Isa 35:1Jer 50:12
Because the dryness is a condition of a place, God can reverse it, turning the dry ground into springs and streams of water.Psa 107:35Isa 41:18
Both
Both belong to the picture of a waterless wasteland and are set side by side to intensify a scene of deadly desolation, the dryness of the ground meeting the thirst of its inhabitants.Ezk 19:13Hos 2:3
Names a place rather than a condition. Again and again it is a "land" of this kind, ground a people can be led through, a vine can be planted in, or an army can be driven out to.Jer 2:6Ezk 19:13Jol 2:20Psa 63:1
Serves as a name for whole regions, standing in lists beside the wilderness and the open desert plain.Isa 35:1Jer 50:12Psa 78:17
Is the standard picture of what judgment leaves behind: a proud city or empire reduced to ground where nobody lives and nobody passes through.Jer 51:43Zep 2:13Hos 2:3
Is the very thing God reverses by giving water, so that pools, springs, and a running river appear where there had been none.Psa 107:35Isa 41:18Psa 105:41
Marks the hardest edge of human survival, the ground the destitute scrape at for anything to eat.Job 30:3
Both
Both name the waterless side of the climate, and in one verse they stand side by side as a pair of forces: between them, drought and heat carry off the water of melted snow.Job 24:19
Both set the terms under which a plant can barely live, so in each picture the presence of water decides whether anything grows at all.Jer 17:8Isa 53:2
Names warmth you can feel in a thing, not only in the weather. It is used of the bread set out before God, still hot on the day it was taken away.1Sa 21:6
Works as a clock in the narratives, marking the hottest stretch of the day: the hour a man sits in his tent doorway, the hour an army stops fighting, the hour raiders reach a house.Gen 18:11Sa 11:112Sa 4:51Sa 11:9
Belongs to the settled turning of the year, named beside cold, seedtime and harvest, summer and winter, as one half of a pair God promises will never stop.Gen 8:22
Can be mild and even welcome, a still warmth resting over the fields at harvest rather than something that kills.Isa 18:4
Names a whole stretch of country that gets no rain, the kind of land that leaves people and animals dying of thirst.Psa 63:1Ezk 19:13Jer 2:6Job 30:3
Is the standard picture of a ruined nation, a settled country reduced to waste where nobody lives any more.Jer 50:12Jer 51:43Zep 2:13Hos 2:3
Is the hopeless landscape God is pictured reversing, wasteland turned into pools and springs, and the unpromising soil a shoot still manages to grow out of.Psa 107:35Isa 41:18Isa 35:1Isa 53:2
Both
Both name ground with no water on it, and both belong to scenes where God settles whether the water is there at all: he turns a sea into walkable ground, and he turns thirsty country into pools.Exo 14:21Isa 41:18
Both can be the shape a punishment takes, with water withdrawn from a place that used to have it.Ezk 30:12Jer 51:43
Names the ground that appears when water is pushed back, the sea floor or river bed laid bare so that people can walk across on foot.Exo 14:21Jos 3:17Jos 4:182Ki 2:8
Works as the opposite number to the sea, the solid half of the world where creatures that breathe air live and where God's shaking reaches.Gen 7:22Hag 2:6
Can describe one particular waterway emptied out, the channel itself left bare, rather than a countryside that never gets rain.Ezk 30:12
Its core is the absence of water, so it is set directly against springs, pools and flowing streams whenever God reverses it.Psa 105:41Psa 107:35Isa 41:18
Describes a condition that can fall on settled, once fertile territory as judgment, drying out cities and nations that were never desert to begin with.Jer 50:12Jer 51:43Zep 2:13
Attaches to the soil underfoot or to the drought itself, so it can describe the parched ground a plant struggles up from rather than a region on a map.Isa 53:2Job 24:19
Both
Both name land that cannot support life, and both are used of the harsh country Israel passed through after leaving Egypt.Psa 78:40Jer 2:6
Both serve as the setting for the promise that God will open water in the waste and make the dead ground live.Isa 43:19Isa 41:18
Names a particular stretch of barren country, the bleak land above the Dead Sea that English Bibles often keep as the place name "Jeshimon", where David hid from Saul.Num 21:201Sa 23:191Sa 26:1
Pictures trackless emptiness rather than thirst: a howling waste with no road through it, where a traveler wanders and finds no settled place.Deu 32:10Psa 107:4
Names the missing water itself, so thirst is the whole point. The psalmist calls his surroundings a land without water and says his body is faint for God there, and Hosea sets the word beside the threat to kill an unfaithful wife with thirst.Psa 63:1Hos 2:3Ezk 19:13
Is what a whole country turns into under judgment, listed alongside other words for ruin and emptiness. Babylon is promised this end and so is Nineveh, and the invading army is driven off into such a place to rot.Jer 50:12Jer 51:43Zep 2:13Jol 2:20
Describes the ground underfoot, the soil a plant or a person actually has to live off. A shoot comes up out of it against all odds, a transplanted vine is stuck in it, and the destitute scratch at it for food.Isa 53:2Job 30:3Job 24:19
Both
Both name the empty country where nobody would look for water, and in one promise they stand side by side as exactly the places God says he will flood: rivers opened on the bare heights, springs in the parched land.Isa 41:18
Points to height and open exposure rather than to any shortage of water. It is ground you go up onto to see and to be seen: Balaam walks up to one to meet God and look out, and Jeremiah tells the people to lift their eyes to them and face what they did there.Num 23:3Jer 3:2
Because the ground is high and uncovered, everything sweeps across it in the open: a scorching wind comes off it, raiders come over all of it, animals stand there gulping at the air, and a cry raised there is heard across the country.Jer 4:11Jer 12:12Jer 14:6Jer 3:21Jer 7:29
Stripped is not the same as lifeless: God promises freed prisoners that they will find their grazing on every one of these bare slopes, which is never said of parched ground.Isa 49:9
tsiyyah in the other biblical languages
ἄνυδροςGreek“waterless”the Greek word for "waterless," used in the Gospels of the dry places a restless spirit wanders through. It captures this word's core idea of ground with no water.
is a fixed stretch of parched terrain, the "land of dryness" where drought has left nothing growing and a shoot out of it looks hopeless.Psa 63:1Jer 51:43Isa 53:2
is the ground God characteristically reverses, turning the parched land into pools and springs of water as the signature picture of rescue and new life.Isa 41:18Isa 35:1Psa 107:35
Both
both name a waterless wilderness where life cannot hold on: the barren places an unclean spirit wanders through finding no rest, and the drought-stricken land no traveler passes through.Mat 12:43Jer 2:6
brands a thing that ought to hold water but gives none, so it pictures empty promise: springs with no water and clouds that carry no rain stand for teachers who advertise refreshment and deliver nothing.2Pe 2:17Jud 1:12
What scholars say about tsiyyah
The standard critical lexicons (HALOT, BDB, DCH) agree in defining this noun, built on a root meaning "to be dry, parched," as "dryness, drought, dry land," and its sense is not in dispute. It occurs sixteen times, entirely in poetry and prophecy, and is characteristically paired with words for uninhabited country such as מִדְבָּר and עֲרָבָה and for devastation such as שְׁמָמָה; the reference works note that its distinctive contribution to those pairings is the specific idea of waterlessness rather than mere emptiness or ruin. Fifteen occurrences describe a parched place; Job 24:19 alone uses it of the drying force itself ("drought and heat"). The rarer related form צָיוֹן (Isaiah 25:5; 32:2) expresses the same idea of a parched region.