tsa'ad

Hebrew has a common, all purpose verb for going and walking (הָלַךְ). This one is narrower and more pictorial: it keeps the single step in view, the foot lifted and set down again. So it turns up where the pace itself matters, in six counted paces beside the ark, in a young man's purposeful walk toward a woman's door, and in the mockery of a wooden idol that cannot manage one step on its own.

Because a measured stride is also what an advancing army looks like, this is the verb the oldest Hebrew poems reach for when God goes out to fight. He strides from the open country of Edom, through the wasteland, across the earth, and the ground shakes under him. The word itself is not a sacred one. It simply pictures an advance you can feel, one deliberate step at a time.

Two uses stretch the picture further. In Job the direction of the verb flips: a man does not stride anywhere, he is marched off, driven along to a destination he never chose. And in Jacob's blessing over Joseph, branches are said to stride out over a wall, though that whole line is famously difficult and readers disagree about what it describes.

The matching noun, a step or a pace (צַעַד), stands right beside the verb in 2 Samuel 6:13, where those carrying the ark go six paces and stop to sacrifice.