tsa'aq

This is a loud, involuntary cry wrung out of a person by pain, danger, injustice, or grief. It is not calm speech or a measured request; it is the shout of someone at the end of their strength, whether a man who has lost a blessing, a slave beaten by an overseer, or a nation crushed under an enemy.

The same cry runs in two directions. Pointed at other people, it is an outcry that demands attention and action: the wronged calling for justice, the desperate begging a king for relief. Pointed at God, it becomes the cry of prayer in trouble, and Scripture promises that God hears it. The two are not really separate words but one cry that reaches whoever can help.

What ties every use together is urgency under pressure. The word almost never describes a happy or relaxed voice. When the Bible wants to show that a situation has become unbearable, it says the people cried out, and that cry is the hinge on which rescue turns.

In a handful of places the verb shifts from a person crying out to a group being called out. The picture is a summons that gathers fighting men: a leader raises the alarm or sends the call, and the people answer by mustering. The English idiom comes close in a phrase like the troops were called up.

This sense clusters in the war stories of Judges and the early monarchy, where Israel or its enemies are rallied to assemble for a campaign. The link to the first meaning is the loud call itself: a single shout goes out, and a crowd responds to it by coming together rather than by adding their own cries.