A verb meaning to press, squeeze, or crush. It describes the physical pressing of something under pressure. The word is used of pressing olives or grapes, and metaphorically of oppression and affliction. The imagery of pressing grapes for wine is one of Scripture's most potent symbols — suffering that produces something life-giving.
The pressing metaphor in Scripture is extraordinarily rich. The winepress is simultaneously a place of crushing and a place of transformation — what goes in as grapes comes out as wine. Isaiah 63's vision of God treading the winepress of judgment combines this with the Servant's suffering. But the greater transformation is positive: the pressing of affliction in the believer's life produces the wine of mature faith. Gethsemane itself means 'oil press' — the place where Jesus was pressed to the point of bloody sweat, yet this ultimate pressing produced redemption for the world.