to praise or honor someone, above all to give glory to God for what he has done
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
This is the most common use of the word in the New Testament. It means to recognize someone's worth out loud, to put their value on display by acknowledging it. Most often the one being honored is God: people see a healing, a rescue, or a changed life, and they respond by giving him the credit.
The word is active and public, not a private feeling. It is:
the crowd breaking out in praise after a miracle
a doxology rising at the end of a prayer
a life lived so that others end up praising God
Because it is about putting worth on display, it can also point the wrong way: people can crave this kind of recognition for themselves, and a city or a person can even heap it on their own name.
When the object is a person rather than God, the word still means to treat them as honored and valued, as when one part of the body is treated with special honor and the whole body shares the joy.
Nuances
1ato give glory to God: to praise him, especially in response to what he has done
1bto fail to give God glory, or to crave honor for oneself
Mat 6:2*Rom 1:21Rev 18:7
1cto honor a person, treating them as valued
Rom 11:13*1Co 12:26
2
to clothe with splendor: to lift someone into a state of radiant honor and glory
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
Here the word does not mean to speak someone's praises but to actually raise them into glory, to invest them with honor and splendor they did not have before. This is something God does. He glorified his servant Jesus by raising and exalting him, and he glorifies believers by bringing them at last into a shining, honored state.
The difference from the first meaning is real: the first is a response of praise to someone already worthy, while this is an act that changes a person's standing, lifting them up into glory. Paul can speak of those God has already brought into this glory as a settled, finished thing, so certain it can be spoken of as done. The same idea makes one thing pale beside another that has been given far greater splendor.
Act 3:13Rom 8:302Co 3:10 (2×)Heb 5:51Pe 1:8
3
in John's Gospel, to reveal someone's true glory, the way the Father and Son honor each other and the cross becomes the moment of glory
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyContested
John uses this word in a way found almost nowhere else, weaving it through the second half of his Gospel. For John, to glorify is to bring someone's true worth into the open so it can be seen. The Father and the Son glorify each other: each reveals and honors the other's glory.
The surprise is where John locates this glory. The hour of glorification is not a throne scene but the cross. When Jesus says the hour has come for the Son to be glorified, he is speaking of his death, which John sees as the very moment Jesus' glory shines out and the Father is honored. After that comes the further glory of the resurrection and return to the Father, the splendor Jesus shared before the world existed.
This is debated, and many scholars treat it as a special development of the ordinary meanings rather than a wholly separate sense: the praise sense and the exalt sense are both present, fused and deepened. It is set apart here because in these chapters the word carries a weight and a movement, from cross to exaltation, that the plain praise sense does not capture on its own.
Whether John's use of the word is a distinct sense or a deepened application of the ordinary meanings of praising and exalting.
majorityJohn develops the verb into a distinctive theological usage in which the crucifixion is itself the act of glorification, fusing the ideas of revelation, honor, and exaltation.; G. Kittel and G. von Rad, 'doxa, doxazo,' TDNT 2:232-255
minorityJohn's usage remains within the ordinary range of the verb (to honor, to exalt) applied to the Father-Son relationship, and is not a separate lexical sense.; BDAG, s.v. doxazo
Names glory as a thing one possesses or radiates: the visible splendor or weight of honor that belongs to God, a person, or a place.Luk 2:9Jhn 1:14
Can be the future, shared destiny believers are promised and will inherit, a state of splendor they enter rather than an act they perform.Rom 8:18Rom 5:2
Is the very honor a person can wrongly crave or steal for themselves, treating glory as a prize to be grasped.Jhn 5:44Mat 4:8
αἰνέωto praise in song or speech, narrower than this word, which can also mean to exalt or invest with honor
Can mean to honor or think highly of a person, not only God, including the honor people wrongly crave from others.Mat 6:21Co 12:26
Carries the sense of investing someone with glory or exalting them into a glorious state, not merely speaking praise; used of Jesus being glorified and of God glorifying his people.Jhn 12:23Jhn 17:5Rom 8:30
Both
Both give God his due in response to what he has done, an audible response of worship; at Bethlehem the shepherds do both together, glorifying and praising God for what they had seen and heard.Luk 2:20
Both are the natural cry after witnessing God's mighty acts: crowds and healed people erupt in it.Luk 19:37Luk 18:43
Ascribes splendor and radiance: the response of praise when God's power breaks into view, crediting God with the glory for what he has done.Mat 9:8Mat 15:31Luk 2:20Luk 5:26
Names God's own act of investing someone with glory, raising them into a glorified state, as the Father glorifies the Son and glorifies those he has justified.Jhn 17:1Jhn 17:5Rom 8:30
Both
Both name the esteem directed toward God: rendering him the regard that is his due.Mat 5:16Jhn 5:23
Carries the distinctly Johannine sense of investing someone with divine splendor, above all the mutual honoring of Father and Son that reaches its height at the cross and exaltation. This is a giving of glory itself, not merely a declaration of greatness.Jhn 12:23Jhn 13:31Jhn 17:1
Names the final state God brings believers into, being clothed with glory at the end. It reaches beyond present praise to a future transformation.Rom 8:30
Both
Both express the response of people who exalt God after witnessing his works, praising him and declaring his greatness.Luk 5:26Act 10:46
Both describe the name or reputation of the Lord being lifted high and held in awe among people.Act 21:20Act 19:17
Can mean to make literally larger, to enlarge in physical size or extent, a plain sense of increase that the other word never carries.Mat 23:52Co 10:15
Is used of God making an act or quality great, as when he shows great mercy toward someone, enlarging the thing itself rather than a person's honor.Luk 1:58
The creaturely response of praise: seeing God act, people give him honor. This is the ordinary sense of glorifying God, and lifting up never carries it.Mat 9:8Luk 2:20Luk 18:43
To clothe with radiant, weighty splendor. In the mutual glorifying of Father and Son the word means to invest with visible divine glory, not to raise to a position.Jhn 17:1Jhn 17:5
The final transformation of the redeemed: those God justifies he also brings into glory. This eschatological sense belongs to glorify alone.Rom 8:30
Both
In John's Gospel both words name the one event of Jesus's death and return to the Father: the hour in which the Son is glorified is the same hour in which he is lifted up from the earth on the cross.Jhn 12:23Jhn 12:32
Physical or positional raising to a height, and thence exaltation to a place of honor at God's right hand. This literal lifting is foreign to glorify.Jhn 3:14Act 2:33Act 5:31
The exalt-and-humble reversal: the word sits in a fixed antithesis with being brought low, so that whoever lifts himself up is abased and the lowly are raised. Glorify never plays this opposite-of-humbling role.Mat 23:12Luk 1:52Luk 14:11
doxazō in the other biblical languages
כָּבֵדHebrew“to honor: honour”the main Hebrew verb behind this one, rooted in the idea of weight and so of honor and glory
Rooted in the idea of weight, it covers being heavy or burdensome and, negatively, the hardening of a heart made dull and stubborn.Exo 8:15Exo 9:71Sa 5:6
The command and practice of honoring people who carry weight in the community, parents, elders, and the worthy.Exo 20:12Deu 5:161Sa 2:30
הָלַלHebrew“to boast: praise”the Hebrew word for boastful, exuberant praise (the root of hallelujah), where this Greek word more often means to give glory or to exalt
Only the Greek word is about honor handed to someone else and said out loud where others can hear it. A healed man follows Jesus praising God while the whole crowd joins in, and Paul asks a church to speak of God together with one voice.Luk 18:43Rom 15:6
The Greek word can also mean to place someone into splendor rather than to say something about them. God raises his servant into honor, and the people he calls he finally brings into glory.Act 3:13Rom 8:30
John uses the Greek word for the way the Father and the Son each display the other's worth, so that the hour of Jesus' death is the very hour he is glorified. The Hebrew word has nothing like this mutual honoring.Jhn 12:23Jhn 17:1
Both
Both words sit at the moment when God's greatness becomes plain to everyone after he rescues his people, which is why English Bibles reach for the same family of words in both places: the song at the sea says he has triumphed "gloriously", and the crowds in Galilee "glorified" the God of Israel when they saw the injured and the blind made well. The Greek Old Testament had already chosen this Greek verb for that line of the song.Exo 15:21Mat 15:31
Both can also turn on a person pushing himself upward into honor. Job pictures a man holding his own head high, and the Greek word covers the giver who makes a show of his gift so that onlookers will praise him.Job 10:16Mat 6:2
Only the Hebrew word describes plain physical rising, with no honor anywhere in the picture: a channel of water that deepens until no one can wade across it, and a marsh plant that shoots up tall as long as it has water.Ezk 47:5Job 8:11
Even with God as the subject the Hebrew word keeps that same upward picture, of one who towers over an opponent in battle after throwing horse and rider into the sea. The Greek word carries no idea of height at all.Exo 15:1
Names the praise that breaks out of a crowd right after God's power shows itself, when people who have just watched a healing say out loud that God is great.Mat 9:8Mrk 2:12Luk 5:25Luk 7:16
Carries the idea of God's own weight being unveiled, with the Father and the Son each making the other's worth visible at the hour of the cross.Jhn 12:23Jhn 13:31Jhn 17:1Jhn 17:5
Can name something God does to people rather than something people give: he lifts those he has put right with himself into that same shining life.Rom 8:30
Stretches to cover a whole way of living, where ordinary behavior in front of outsiders is what makes them give God the credit.Mat 5:161Co 6:201Pe 2:12
Both
Both can point at splendor a bystander can actually see, not merely an attitude: royal clothing that gleams on the road from Edom, and an older ministry that arrived with real radiance.Isa 63:12Co 3:10
Both name the honor one person hands to another and the public loss when it is withheld, so the elders left unhonored and the teacher praised by everyone stand as two sides of one idea.Lam 5:12Luk 4:15
Both can turn back on the person doing it, naming the move of claiming honor for yourself: pushing forward into the king's presence, or a city that sat and called herself great.Pro 25:6Rev 18:7
Can mean honor gone wrong, the favoritism a judge is forbidden to show, and the law bans that tilt toward the poor man and toward the powerful man alike.Exo 23:3Lev 19:15
Shows up in a plain command about bodily respect for age, telling a person to rise to their feet when someone gray headed comes near.Lev 19:32
What scholars say about doxazō
Standard lexica (BDAG; LSJ for the Classical background) trace the verb from its Classical sense "to think, hold an opinion" to the Septuagint and New Testament sense "to glorify, honor," a shift driven by the Septuagint's use of doxa to render Hebrew kabod (weight, honor). TDNT (Kittel/von Rad) and EDNT treat the resulting range: to praise/honor (the dominant use), and to clothe with eschatological splendor (Rom 8:30). The Johannine usage is widely held to be a distinctive theological development in which the crucifixion is the hour of glorification, fusing revelation, honor, and exaltation; commentators such as Bultmann and later Johannine scholarship explore this at length, while BDAG keeps it within the verb's ordinary range applied to the Father-Son relationship.
Sources
BDAG, s.v. δοξάζωlexicon
G. Kittel and G. von Rad, 'δόξα, δοξάζω,' TDNT 2:232-255lexicon
H. Hegermann, 'δόξα, δοξάζω,' EDNT 1:344-349lexicon