to be thirsty: to feel the body's urgent need for water
TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled
This verb reports what happens to a body left without water. It turns up where you would expect it: Israel in the desert with nothing to drink, Samson collapsing after a battle and expecting to die, a fugitive commander stumbling into a tent and begging for a drink, a young woman told where to find the water jars during a long day of harvest work. Two of those scenes set the verb beside the noun for thirst itself (צָמָא), so the sentence says twice over how bad it has become. Job turns the same word into a protest: laborers tread out the wine and still go thirsty (Job 24:11).
Because thirst is a need you cannot talk yourself out of, it became a way to name a longing that nothing else will satisfy. Twice the Psalms turn the verb on God himself: "my soul thirsts for God, for the living God" (Psalm 42:2), and, out of a dry and waterless land, "my soul thirsts for you" (Psalm 63:1). Both times another word for longing stands nearby, the deer that pants (עָרַג) for streams of water in the line just before the first, and a body that pines away (כָּמַהּ) in the second. The claim is not that the feeling runs strong but that it is a need.
The prophets use the word at both edges of Israel's story:
to be left thirsty is what judgment looks like, when God's servants drink and those who walked away from him go without (Isaiah 65:13)
never to thirst again is what rescue looks like, with springs of water set along the road home (Isaiah 49:10)
not having thirsted is what the people remember of the desert, when God split the rock and the water ran out for them (Isaiah 48:21)
Nuances
1ato be thirsty for water: the body's real and pressing need for a drink
the word turns up where thirst is a matter of survival rather than discomfort, with death named as the alternativeJdg 15:18Exo 17:3
its figurative use is reserved for a person longing for God, and is never used of wanting anything elsePsa 42:2Psa 63:1
Both
both name the body's craving for water and the move to go find someRut 2:9Jdg 4:19
Only thirsty
in ordinary English being thirsty is a mild condition, a glass of water away from over
English also uses "thirsty" for eagerness of any kind, as in thirsty for attention or thirsty for power
“thirst”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“suffer thirst”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How tsame differs from similar Hebrew words
צָמָאthe noun for thirst itself, the condition a person can die of; the verb reports the moment thirst comes over someone, and the two stand together in Exodus 17:3 and Judges 15:18
It puts the thirst inside a particular person, as something they feel and say: Sisera asks for water because he is thirsty, Boaz tells Ruth to drink whenever she gets thirsty, and Job pictures workers who press out oil and wine yet go thirsty themselves.Jdg 4:19Rut 2:9Job 24:11
It is the word the psalms reach for when a person longs for God, so the thirst is a desire the worshipper owns rather than a lack imposed on them.Psa 42:2Psa 63:1
It carries God's promises and warnings about who will go thirsty: those he leads through the desert do not, those he feeds will not, and those who reject him will.Isa 48:21Isa 49:10Isa 65:13
Both
Both name plain physical need for water, and one verse can use them together: at Rephidim the people are thirsty for water and accuse Moses of bringing them out to kill them with thirst.Exo 17:3
In both, unmet need for water is life-threatening: Samson, badly thirsty after his victory, calls on God rather than die of thirst.Jdg 15:18
It names the condition itself, so it can be handed out as a punishment and can kill: God threatens to leave an unfaithful people to die of it, Hezekiah's enemies taunt Jerusalem with it, and a conquered people serve their enemies in hunger and thirst.Hos 2:32Ch 32:11Deu 28:48Isa 50:2
It names the physical damage thirst does to a body: a tongue that fails, a child's tongue sticking to the roof of the mouth, strong young people fainting.Isa 41:17Lam 4:4Amo 8:13
It works as the need a drink answers, so water is given "for" it: God brings water from the rock for Israel's thirst, wild donkeys break theirs at the streams, and the sufferer of Psalm 69 is handed vinegar for his.Neh 9:15Neh 9:20Psa 104:11Psa 69:21
It can describe a place rather than a person, naming ground that is parched and a proud city brought down to sit in dryness.Jer 48:18Ezk 19:13
It can be a scarcity God sends that has nothing to do with water: Amos announces a famine in the land that is a thirst for hearing what God says.Amo 8:11
צָמֵאthe describing word from the same root, naming a thirsty person or a parched patch of ground as a settled state; the verb instead reports thirst happening to someone
Reports thirst as something that happens to people at a moment in the story, and it is usually the crisis that drives the scene: the people quarrel with Moses over water, Samson collapses after the battle, workers crush grapes for others and go without a drink themselves.Exo 17:3Jdg 15:18Job 24:11
Carries the picture over to the inner life: the soul itself thirsts for God the way a body craves water. This longing use belongs to this word alone.Psa 42:2Psa 63:1
Because it states an event rather than a condition, it can be denied outright or held out as a threat: they did not thirst when God led them through the deserts, they will never thirst again, or, to the disobedient, you will be the ones left thirsting.Isa 48:21Isa 49:10Isa 65:13
Both
Both name the plain bodily need for water in a dry place, and both sit beside hunger and exhaustion in the same picture of people worn down by the wilderness.Exo 17:32Sa 17:29
Both belong to Isaiah's promise that God satisfies his people with water, whether by saying they will thirst no more or by calling the thirsty to come and drink.Isa 49:10Isa 55:1
Both are used of an ordinary drink of water offered to a specific person in need, so in a single scene either word can carry the request or the remedy.Jdg 4:19Rut 2:9Isa 21:14
Labels a person by their condition, "the thirsty one", and files them with the standing categories of the needy: hungry, weary, and thirsty in the wilderness, or fainting with hunger and thirst on a lost road.2Sa 17:29Psa 107:5Isa 32:6
Names the person on the receiving end of someone else's action: the one you hand a cup of water, the one the people of Tema came out to meet with water, the one invited to come to the waters.Pro 25:21Isa 21:14Isa 55:1
Reaches past people to parched ground: land that has had water set against land that has had none, and dry earth waiting for God to pour water on it.Deu 29:19Isa 44:3
עָרַגto pant or crave, the deer at the dry streambed in Psalm 42; it names longing as a yearning of the whole creature, while thirsting names it as the specific need for water
Names ordinary bodily thirst as a plain fact of daily life, with no poetry about it: a fugitive asking for a drink, a field worker told where the water jars are, laborers who tread the winepresses and still go without.Jdg 4:19Rut 2:9Job 24:11
Describes thirst severe enough to threaten life and to provoke complaint against God and his messengers.Exo 17:3Jdg 15:18
Is the standard word for the thirst God either removes in his promises or leaves in his judgments, which makes it a fixed term in prophetic speech.Isa 48:21Isa 49:10Isa 65:13
Both
Both turn the craving for water into the picture of longing after God, and they stand in consecutive lines of the same psalm, the second restating the first.Psa 42:1Psa 42:2
Both set that longing in a landscape where the water has failed, so the ache is measured by the dryness of the ground.Jol 1:20Psa 63:1
Pictures a creature straining and crying out toward water it cannot reach, so it names the visible reaching rather than the inner condition of being dry.Psa 42:1Jol 1:20
Every use is poetry, and in both of them the one longing is an animal: a deer at stream beds and the wild beasts of the field. It never reports a plain, everyday case of someone wanting a drink.Psa 42:1Jol 1:20
כָּמַהּto pine or waste away with longing, standing beside thirsting in Psalm 63:1; its weight falls on a body growing faint rather than on the craving for a drink
Names plain bodily thirst, the ordinary need for water that a drink relieves: a people with no water in the desert, a soldier asking for a drink, a field worker told to go to the jars, a man so parched he thinks he will die.Exo 17:3Jdg 4:19Rut 2:9Jdg 15:18
Becomes a picture of unjust hardship and of judgment: laborers who tread out the wine and still go thirsty, and those warned that God's servants will drink while they themselves are left thirsty.Job 24:11Isa 65:13
Supplies the language of rescue, since the promise God makes is stated as thirst that never comes: water from the rock on the desert road, and a homeward journey where his people will not go thirsty.Isa 48:21Isa 49:10
Both
Both name a wanting that is felt physically, and Psalm 63:1 lays them side by side in one breath: the self thirsts for God and the flesh pines for him, in a dry and weary land with no water.Psa 63:1
Both can aim at God rather than at water, turning the body's craving into a way of saying how badly a person wants his presence.Psa 63:1Psa 42:2
Never used of wanting water. Its one appearance in the Bible is a longing for God himself, spoken in a dry land where there is no water, so the parched setting is the picture rather than the need being described.Psa 63:1
Locates the yearning in the body: it is the worn out flesh that pines here, while the thirsting is credited to the whole self, so this word names a bodily ache of desire rather than an appetite that could be satisfied with a drink.Psa 63:1
רָעֵבto be hungry, thirst's constant partner in the same sentences (Isaiah 49:10;Isaiah 65:13); hunger can be endured for days, while thirst kills in a matter of them, which is why thirst carries the sharper urgency
Names the craving for water specifically; the lack is drink, and the relief is water to swallow.Exo 17:3Jdg 15:18Isa 48:21
Stretches into a longing of the whole person for God, picturing the soul as parched ground that pants for him.Psa 42:2Psa 63:1
Both
Both name a basic bodily want, and the prophets set them side by side as a matched pair for total deprivation: the salvation God gives takes both away, and the judgment he sends imposes both together.Isa 49:10Isa 65:13
Names the craving for food specifically; the lack is bread, and the relief is something to eat.Gen 41:55Deu 8:3Jer 42:14
tsame in the other biblical languages
διψάωGreek“to thirst”the Greek verb for being thirsty, which covers the same bodily need but in the New Testament reaches further, to thirsting for righteousness or for the water Jesus offers, a stretch the Hebrew verb never makes
Thirst is the grievance a desperate people or person brings to God, the crisis that provokes water from a rock or a hollow place.Exo 17:3Jdg 15:18
It describes people parched by their own labor in the fields, including workers who press out oil and wine and are still left with nothing to drink, which makes it a word for injustice as well as heat.Rut 2:9Job 24:11
It marks the dividing line in a warning about the future: God's servants will drink while those who abandon him are left thirsty.Isa 65:13
Both
Both name plain bodily thirst under real deprivation, whether a nation with no water in the desert or a hard pressed worker going without.Exo 17:31Co 4:11
Both carry God's promise that thirst will one day be over for good, and the New Testament picture of the redeemed who thirst no more repeats the Old Testament wording closely.Isa 49:10Rev 7:16
Both stretch past the body to picture a craving that water cannot touch, so the same word covers a longing for God and a longing to see things put right.Psa 42:2Mat 5:6
Thirst becomes an open invitation: being thirsty is the only qualification for coming and taking the water of life without paying for it.Jhn 7:37Rev 21:6Rev 22:17
It names a thirst Jesus claims to end permanently, so that the person who comes to him will never be thirsty again.Jhn 4:14Jhn 6:35
Someone else's thirst becomes the test of how people have treated Christ himself, and even an enemy's thirst obliges a response.Mat 25:35Mat 25:42Rom 12:20
It is spoken by Jesus about himself as he dies, so the word describes God's own Son in bodily need.Jhn 19:28
What scholars say about tsame
The standard lexica are in agreement on this verb. BDB and HALOT give it as "to be thirsty, to thirst" with no second root proposed, and DCH lists the same single semantic field across its ten Hebrew Bible attestations. The root is well attested across Semitic (Akkadian samu, Aramaic and Syriac forms, Arabic zami'a), all with the same sense, so neither derivation nor meaning is in question. Reference works on the biblical vocabulary of the wilderness and of hunger and thirst (TWOT; TDOT, s.v.) treat the two Psalms occurrences as a metaphorical extension of the physical sense rather than as a separate lexical item, noting that the metaphor's object is always God and that its imagery stays anchored in the desert setting the psalm names. The related noun, adjective, and abstract forms of the root fill out the same field and are consistently distinguished from the verb by function rather than by sense.
Sources
HALOT, s.v. צמאlexicon
BDB, s.v. צמאlexicon
David J. A. Clines (ed.), The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, s.v. צמאlexicon
Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, s.v. צָמֵאtheological dictionary
Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, s.v. צָמֵאtheological dictionary