The Hebrew bakah means to weep, cry aloud, or shed tears — the full expression of grief, sorrow, or deep emotion. It is one of the most human words in the Hebrew Bible, appearing over 114 times across narrative, lament, and prophecy.
Bakah is the vocabulary of the soul in pain. Scripture treats weeping not as weakness but as honest worship — the honest cry of a creature before its Creator. Hannah wept before the Lord in her barrenness (1 Samuel 1:10), and God answered. David wept for his son Absalom. Jeremiah wept for his people. Jesus wept at Lazarus's tomb (John 11:35 — the shortest verse in Scripture). The Psalms of Lament (e.g., Psalm 6, 42, 56) model weeping as prayer. Theologically, the prevalence of bakah in Scripture affirms that God takes human grief seriously, hears every tear, and will one day wipe them all away (Revelation 21:4).