Min HaMeitzar — Out of the Narrow Place
Psalm 118's cry from the narrow place (Mitzar — also echoing Egypt/Mitzrayim) to God's answer in the wide expanse is the Psalms' paradigm of the movement from constriction to expansion, from suffering to liberation.
Psalm 118 — the final psalm of the Hallel (praise-psalms recited on festivals) — opens: 'Min hametzar karati Yah, anani bamerchav Yah' — 'From the narrow place I called to God; God answered me in the wide expanse.' The Hebrew 'metzar' (narrow place) echoes 'Mitzrayim' (Egypt — the narrow land from which Israel was liberated at Passover). The psalm traces the complete arc: the cry from constriction, the divine response that opens into spaciousness, the gratitude and praise that flow from liberation. The theological claim is that the narrow place is the starting point of the relationship with God, not its negation: it is precisely from the 'metzar' that the genuine cry arises. The famous verse 22 — 'The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone' — is cited in the New Testament, the Talmud, and across many traditions as the paradigm of reversal: what is dismissed by conventional wisdom becomes the foundation of what endures.
From the narrow place I called to God; God answered me in the wide expanse.
The verse is Psalm 118:5: 'Min ha-meitzar karati Yah, anani va-merchav Yah' — 'From the narrow place I called to God; He answered me with wide expanse.' The wordplay of meitzar (straits, cognate with Mitzrayim/Egypt) against merchav (open space) frames redemption as movement from constriction to breadth; the verse stands within Hallel, Psalms 113–118.
Tanakh