This rare term denotes periods of severe want and trouble. It appears in two parallel psalms describing God's absence in 'times of distress' and once in Jeremiah's heading concerning droughts. The root may relate to concepts of scarcity, reduction, or diminishment. The Psalms passages question why God seems distant during crises, while Jeremiah employs the plural to introduce prophetic oracles about severe water shortage. Some lexical traditions connect it to Aramaic and Syriac terms for smallness or reduction, suggesting the narrowing of resources during famine or drought.