o.ni denotes experienced hardship or suffering, whether personal, communal, or imposed through oppression and confinement.

The occurrences consistently denote a condition of severe hardship: individuals ask God to see it, communities endure it under oppression, and poets describe it through images of captivity, bodily collapse, and remembered suffering. The term can mark personal distress, Israel’s suffering in Egypt, and the adversity recalled in exile or lament without requiring separate lexical senses.

1. Experienced hardship and oppressive distress · dominant

   In Exodus 3:7, the construct form names the condition of the people in Egypt, alongside their cry because of oppressors and their pain; the APB renders the clause "I have surely seen the affliction of my people." In Genesis 29:32 and Psalm 119:153, the same construct use is the hardship that God is asked or said to see, while Job 36:8 portrays people as bound in fetters and captured in cords of distress. Absolute forms likewise occur in descriptions of hardship, as in Job 30:16, where "the days of affliction" grasp the speaker.

   Exodus 3:7Genesis 29:32Job 36:8Job 30:16Psalm 119:153Lamentations 1:7

In the Anselm Project Bible: The APB commonly presents the term with "affliction," including personal appeals for God to see suffering and accounts of Israel’s distress. In some verses the translation foregrounds the surrounding image instead, such as prisoners, enemy pressure, or bodily collapse.