to rise high: to swell, shoot up, or tower above what surrounds it
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
This verb is a picture word for upward movement. Its plainest uses are physical: floodwater deepening until a person can no longer wade across, and a marsh reed shooting up above the mud it grows in. In each case something climbs above the level around it, and the climbing is what the word names, not the height finally reached.
That one image stretches to cover people and God without changing shape. A man can rise in his own estimation the way water rises in a channel, and the LORD can rise over an enemy army the way a wave rises over a chariot. The Song of the Sea in Exodus 15 leans on exactly that overlap: the line saying God has risen high is the same line that says horse and rider went down into the sea.
The verb occurs only five times, so the shades below rest on a small sample. Its core is nevertheless clear, because the same root produced a large family of common nouns for majesty and for arrogance (גָּאוֹן among them), and those nouns confirm that the idea underneath is rising above.
Nuances
1aof water: to rise and deepen until it cannot be crossed
TranslatabilityDirect
Ezk 47:5
1bof a plant: to shoot up tall in wet ground
TranslatabilityApproximate
Job 8:11
1cof a person: to hold oneself high, to rise in self-importance
TranslatabilityApproximate
Job 10:16*
1dof the LORD: to rise high over an enemy, and so to be exalted in victory
gives a picture rather than a verdict, God rising the way water rises over whatever it coversExo 15:1
is doubled in the Hebrew for emphasis, a device the English phrase cannot showExo 15:21
Both
both place the LORD decisively above the army that drowned at the seaExo 15:1Exo 15:21
Only triumphed gloriously
reads as a report on how a battle came out, where the Hebrew describes a movement upward
carries a note of ceremony and applause that the Hebrew word does not supply
“highly exalted”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“grow”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“risen”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“lifted up”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How ga'ah differs from similar Hebrew words
רוּםthe ordinary Hebrew word for being high or being lifted up, used hundreds of times of every kind of subject, without the picture of something swelling upward from below
Nothing and nobody is ever lifted by this word. Every use names something mounting up of itself: water in a channel swelling deeper than a person can wade, or a reed running up tall out of the marsh that feeds it.Ezk 47:5Job 8:11
In the song at the sea it stands on its own as the whole reason for the praise, said twice in a row for force and usually rendered "he has triumphed gloriously", with no mention of anything the LORD raised. What it says is that he surged up over horse and rider.Exo 15:1Exo 15:21
Both
Both describe a great rise of water and what it carries. One has a river swollen too deep to cross on foot; the other has the flood bearing the ark high above the ground.Ezk 47:5Gen 7:17
Both belong to the praise of God's supremacy in the same song at the sea. One line says the LORD has risen up in triumph, and the next says "I will exalt him".Exo 15:1Exo 15:2
There is nearly always something being lifted by someone: a hand raised to swear an oath, a voice raised in a shout, a staff held out over the Nile.Gen 14:22Gen 39:15Exo 7:20
It is the word for raising a person's standing. God lifts the needy off the ash heap to seat them with princes, and the same song pairs the lifting with bringing others low.1Sa 2:81Sa 2:7
It became the settled priestly term for setting a portion apart by lifting it out of the whole: the handful taken from the grain offering, and the holy gifts Israel lifts to the LORD, which older Bibles call the "heave offering".Lev 2:9Num 18:19
It can describe something that simply stands high, with no rising in view at all: the hilltops where other nations kept their shrines, or the throne Isaiah saw lifted above him.Deu 12:2Isa 6:1
גָּבַהּheight as a settled fact, how tall a tree or a wall or a heart stands, where this word names the act of climbing
Something becomes tall or deep all by itself, with nobody raising it. Ezekiel's guide keeps measuring and the stream keeps getting deeper until it is too deep to wade, and a marsh plant is pictured shooting up high so long as it has water.Ezk 47:5Job 8:11
It is the victory shout Israel sings at the sea, usually rendered "he has triumphed gloriously": God has risen high over the enemy. The picture is height reached in triumph, not a load anyone picked up.Exo 15:1Exo 15:21
Both
Both belong to the language of a head held high, the picture of a man standing tall again. Job imagines his own head coming up only to be hunted down for it, while Joseph promises Pharaoh's cupbearer that his head will be raised and his job restored.Job 10:16Gen 40:13
Both belong to the language of rising flood water, from different sides of it: one names the water itself gaining depth, the other names water hoisting a boat up clear of the ground.Ezk 47:5Gen 7:17
It is the ordinary word for picking a weight up and hauling it: donkeys loaded with grain for the trip home, sacks filled with as much food as the men can carry.Gen 42:26Gen 44:1
From carrying a weight it stretches to carrying guilt and its penalty, and then to taking that weight away, which is why the same word is often rendered "forgive". Cain protests that his punishment is heavier than he can carry, Abraham asks whether God will lift the guilt of a whole city, and Joseph's brothers beg him to lift theirs.Gen 4:13Gen 18:24Gen 50:17
It supplies the everyday gestures of the body, each a fixed way of speaking: raising the eyes to look off into the distance, and raising the voice to weep out loud.Gen 22:4Gen 21:16Gen 29:11
It also names the raised hand of a solemn promise, God swearing by the gesture of a lifted hand that he will bring Israel into the land.Exo 6:8
גָּאוֹןthe common noun built on this verb, which settled into two fixed senses the verb itself never reaches: the majesty of God and the arrogance of people
This is the word Israel sings. In the song at the sea the LORD has "risen up" in triumph over horse and rider, and here the rising is glory rather than fault. The other word never describes anything honorable.Exo 15:1Exo 15:21
Measures real height and growth with no moral judgment attached: marsh reeds standing tall only where there is water, and a stream that deepens until nobody can wade across it. The other word's plain physical use is heat, not height.Job 8:11Ezk 47:5
Both
Both start in the physical world with something swelling past its former limits, one with water rising until a stream cannot be crossed, the other with a pot brought up to the boil, and both then carry that picture over to the way a person behaves.Ezk 47:5Gen 25:29
Both can describe someone setting himself higher than his place allows, and in both the move draws a response from God: a head held high is hunted like a lion, and Babylon, having grown insolent toward the Holy One of Israel, is repaid for what she has done.Job 10:16Jer 50:29
Names deliberately going ahead against an instruction that was clearly given, which is why the law reaches for it: killing a neighbor by design, daring to speak in the LORD's name a word the LORD never gave, and the warning to the watching people never to do such a thing again.Exo 21:14Deu 18:20Deu 17:13
Israel's march up into the hill country shows the shape of the fault plainly: the command had been heard and the people went anyway, so the word sits alongside outright rebellion rather than alongside vanity.Deu 1:43
Can be aimed at how people treat other people, not only at defiance of God: Egypt's high-handed dealing with Israel is described this way, and it is the ground on which the LORD is confessed greater than all gods.Exo 18:11Neh 9:10
Serves as the standing word for a long national record of refusing God. Israel's confession uses it of the ancestors who stiffened their necks and would not listen, and again of a later generation who would not turn back to the law.Neh 9:16Neh 9:29
ga'ah in the other biblical languages
ὑψόωGreek“to lift up”the Greek verb for raising someone to a high position, close to this word when God or human self-importance is in view, but with no flood or growth behind it
Its plainest uses belong to water and plants going up by themselves, with nobody doing any lifting: a stream that keeps deepening until a person can no longer wade across, and marsh reeds shooting up above the mud they grow in.Ezk 47:5Job 8:11
What it names is the swelling upward itself, not a change in anyone's rank, so even where a person is in view it is his head climbing the way water climbs in a channel, and that climbing is what brings the hunter down on him.Job 10:16
At the sea it is doubled for force and said of the LORD's own rising over the drowned army. The height belongs to God already and is being celebrated, not handed to anyone by a higher authority.Exo 15:1Exo 15:21
Both
Both take the plain picture of going up and use it for honor and victory, which is why English Bibles reach for the same wording in each: "highly exalted" of the LORD at the sea, and "exalted" of the risen Jesus raised to God's right hand.Exo 15:1Act 2:33
Both keep a literal, physical use alongside that sense of honor, so one word can describe water getting deeper and the other a figure raised up on a pole where everyone could look at it.Ezk 47:5Jhn 3:14
Someone else does the raising, and in the New Testament that someone is almost always God: he lifts the lowly out of their low place, and he seats the risen Jesus at his own right hand. The word therefore keeps track of who grants the height to whom.Luk 1:52Act 2:33Act 5:31
It carries a reversal pattern that runs through several books: anyone who raises himself will be brought low, and anyone who puts himself low will be raised. The same word names both halves of the exchange, which is what makes the saying bite.Mat 23:12Luk 14:11Luk 18:14Jas 4:101Pe 5:6
In John's Gospel it holds two things together in one act: the raising of Jesus on the cross is the very raising that puts him in glory. Nothing in the Hebrew verb reaches for that kind of double meaning.Jhn 3:14Jhn 8:28Jhn 12:32Jhn 12:34
It can be said of a whole town rather than a person, describing a community that imagined itself raised as high as heaven before being told it would go down to the place of the dead.Mat 11:23Luk 10:15
δοξάζωGreek“to glorify”to glorify: the Greek Old Testament chose this verb for the Exodus 15 line, turning the image of rising high into one of public splendor
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
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 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
What scholars say about ga'ah
The standard lexica treat this as a single verb of upward movement. BDB gives "rise up, grow up, be exalted" and arranges the entry with the physical uses first (the waters of Ezek 47:5, the marsh plants of Job 8:11), then the applications to persons and to God; HALOT and DCH agree on the same range and offer no competing division. TDOT, in its article on the גאה root, locates the pejorative development in the nominal forms (גָּאוֹן, גַּאֲוָה, גֵּאוּת, and the adjective גֵּאֶה) rather than in the verb, which occurs only these five times and never in a clearly condemnatory frame. Exod 15:1 and 15:21 place the infinitive absolute גָּאֹה before the perfect גָּאָה, and commentators read the doubling as intensification, which is the basis both for the traditional rendering "triumphed gloriously" and for the more literal "he is highly exalted." Job 10:16 is the one syntactically contested occurrence: the third-person verb has no explicit subject, and interpreters supply either רֹאשִׁי from 10:15 (so BDB, "if it, my head, lift itself up") or God as the subject of the hunting imagery that follows; Clines (Job 1-20, WBC 17) reviews the options. The lexical value of the verb is unaffected either way.
Sources
BDB, s.v. גָּאָהlexicon
HALOT, s.v. גאהlexicon
DCH, s.v. גאהlexicon
TDOT, s.v. גָּאָהtheological-dictionary
David J. A. Clines, Job 1-20, Word Biblical Commentary 17commentary