thirst: the painful craving for water when it is lacking, and the deadly deprivation behind that craving.
Thirst is one of the plainest words in the Hebrew Bible, and one of the most dangerous. It names the body's craving for water and, more often, the deadly shortage behind that craving: people who faint, whose tongue clings to the roof of the mouth, who die when the water runs out. It is a standard picture of judgment and of the wilderness, where survival hangs on the next spring.
Because the danger is so vivid, the word also works as a metaphor. When Amos warns of a coming famine that is not a thirst for water but a hunger "of hearing the words of the LORD" (Amos 8:11), thirst becomes the image for a craving only God can satisfy. The same word can also describe the land itself: a wilderness of drought (צִיָּה) and thirst, ground as parched as a person left without a drink.
Thirst keeps close company with hunger (רָעָב). The two name the twin wants that break a body cut off from food and water, and they stand side by side wherever Scripture pictures deprivation.