StrongerBible

shavah

שַׁוְעָה

HebrewH7775“cry, cry for help, ...”

Appears 11 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Exo 2:231Sa 5:122Sa 22:7Psa 18:6(7)Psa 34:15(16)Psa 39:12(13)Psa 40:1(2)Psa 102:1(2)Psa 145:19Jer 8:19Lam 3:56
Root family
Word studyResearch-gradeshav-AHnoun

What shavah means

a cry for help: the urgent shout of someone in trouble, normally raised to God and carrying the expectation that he will hear and rescue

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

This is a narrow, specialized word, and it is worth knowing exactly how narrow. It appears eleven times, and every one of them is somebody's cry: "my cry," "their cry," "the cry of the city." It is never a shout of anger, never a call across a field, never a battle yell. It is the sound a person makes when trouble has gone past what they can manage, and nine times out of eleven it is aimed at God.

What makes the word distinctive is less its meaning than the company it keeps. Wherever it turns up, a verb of hearing or saving is usually standing right beside it:

  • God's ears are turned toward the cry of the righteous (Psalm 34:15)
  • the cry comes before him and reaches into his ears (Psalm 18:6)
  • he hears their cry and saves them (Psalm 145:19)

The word does not simply describe a noise. It assumes a listener, and it assumes the listener acts.

There is also a sound-play built into it that no translation can carry. In Hebrew this word for crying and the word for rescue sound very much alike, and the poets arranged their lines so the two ring against each other: the cry already echoes the salvation it is asking for. Scholars once thought the two were literally the same word. They are not, but the rhyme is real, and the poets clearly heard it.

Hebrew has several other words in this same field, and the differences are worth keeping straight. Prayer (תְּפִלָּה) is the settled, often formal act of addressing God, and two psalms set it beside this word, the sober term first and then the raw one. An outcry over a wrong done (צְעָקָה) belongs to the world of complaints and courts. A groan (נְאָקָה) is the wordless noise of pain and asks for nothing at all. This word is a request, urgently made, to someone believed able to answer it.

Nuances

1aa sufferer's cry to God for help, and that same cry spoken of as something God hears
Exo 2:232Sa 22:7Psa 18:6(7)Psa 34:15(16)Psa 39:12(13)Psa 40:1(2)Psa 102:1(2)Psa 145:19Lam 3:56
1ba cry of distress going up from a stricken town or people, with no one named to hear it
1Sa 5:12Jer 8:19

What scholars say about shavah

Every major lexicon gives this noun a single sense: BDB (1002-1003) "cry for help"; HALOT (1443-1444) "a cry for help, a call for help"; Gesenius, 18th edition (1334-1335), Notschrei; Clines, Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, "cry for help". What distinguishes the word is not its gloss but its distribution and its collocations: eleven occurrences of the noun, always in construct or carrying a pronominal suffix, alongside a cognate verb attested in only one stem, the whole group concentrated overwhelmingly in Psalms and Job and tightly bound to the verbs for hearing, answering and saving. Richard Boyce, The Cry to God in the Old Testament (SBL Dissertation Series 103, 1988), the standard monograph, separates this root from the juridical outcry of zaʿaq and ṣaʿaq, which is the appeal of a wronged party to a superior, and places it instead among the prayer words of the psalmic lament; Rainer Albertz reaches the same conclusion in his TDOT treatments of both outcry roots, and Patrick Miller, They Cried to the Lord (1994), maps the entire cry cluster and identifies this root as its specifically prayer-directed member. Miller and Claus Westermann both read the noun inside a fixed arc of distress, cry, hearing, deliverance and new song, with Exodus 2:23-25 as its narrative source and Psalms 18, 22, 34, 40 and 145 as its psalmic elaborations. On Exodus 2:23 Childs reads the fourfold outcry as a rhetorical intensification matched to a fourfold divine response, Propp (Anchor Bible 2, 1999, 177-179) argues that the four roots are semantically layered rather than merely piled up, and Sarna observes that the cry is not said to be addressed to God yet reaches him regardless. The old derivation of this root from yašaʿ, "to save", entertained by Gesenius in the Thesaurus and left open by BDB, has been abandoned since John Sawyer showed that yašaʿ reflects an original interdental second radical, attested in Ugaritic, Amorite, Sabaean, Moabite and Nabatean personal names, whereas this root has a plain sibilant; Sawyer's result is accepted by HALOT, Gesenius 18, DCH and TDOT. The positive etymology remains weak: Lothar Kopf's proposal of Arabic ghawwatha, "cry for help" (VT 8, 1958, 206-207), requires an irregular consonantal correspondence plus a metathesis, which James Barr called shaky (Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament, 2nd ed., 97-98), and no cognate verb is attested in Ugaritic, Akkadian, Aramaic or Ethiopic. What survives is a rhetorical rather than etymological bond: NIDOTTE makes the sound-play between the two roots the center of its treatment, and Leslie Allen (Word Biblical Commentary 21) reads Psalm 145:19, "he hears their cry and saves them", as the culminating creedal statement of the Psalter's theology of the cry.

In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • BDB, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, 1002-1003, s.v. שַׁוְעָהlexicon
  • Koehler, Baumgartner, Stamm, HALOT, 1443-1444, s.v. שַׁוְעָהlexicon
  • Wilhelm Gesenius, Hebraeisches und Aramaeisches Handwoerterbuch ueber das Alte Testament, 18th ed., 1334-1335, s.v. שַׁוְעָהlexicon
  • David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, s.v. שַׁוְעָהlexicon
  • Richard N. Boyce, The Cry to God in the Old Testament (SBL Dissertation Series 103; Scholars Press, 1988)monograph
  • Patrick D. Miller, They Cried to the Lord: The Form and Theology of Biblical Prayer (Fortress, 1994)monograph
  • Claus Westermann, Praise and Lament in the Psalms (ET, John Knox, 1981)monograph
  • Rainer Albertz, zaʿaq and ṣaʿaq, in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament 4:112-122 and 12:519-528theological-dictionary
  • John F. A. Sawyer, yšʿ, to Save, in Congress Volume: Edinburgh 1974 (Supplements to Vetus Testamentum 28; Brill, 1975)article
  • John F. A. Sawyer, What Was a mosia?, Vetus Testamentum 15 (1965): 475-486article
  • Lothar Kopf, Arabische Etymologien und Parallelen zum Bibelwoerterbuch, Vetus Testamentum 8 (1958): 206-207article
  • James Barr, Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament, 2nd ed. (Eisenbrauns, 1987), 97-98monograph
  • Brevard S. Childs, The Book of Exodus (Old Testament Library; Westminster, 1974)commentary
  • William H. C. Propp, Exodus 1-18 (Anchor Bible 2; Doubleday, 1999), 177-179commentary
  • Nahum M. Sarna, Exodus (JPS Torah Commentary; Jewish Publication Society, 1991)commentary
  • Peter C. Craigie, Psalms 1-50 (Word Biblical Commentary 19; Word, 1983)commentary
  • Hans-Joachim Kraus, Psalms 1-59 (Continental Commentary; ET, Augsburg, 1988)commentary
  • Leslie C. Allen, Psalms 101-150 (Word Biblical Commentary 21; Word, 1983)commentary
  • Willem A. VanGemeren, ed., New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis (Zondervan, 1997), s.v. שועtheological-dictionary

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of שַׁוְעָה

f s construct

שַׁוְעָתִי

2Sa 22:7, Psa 18:6, Psa 39:12, Psa 40:1, Psa 102:1, Lam 3:56

f s construct

שַׁוְעָתָם

Exo 2:23, Psa 34:15, Psa 145:19

f s construct

שַׁוְעַת

1Sa 5:12, Jer 8:19