StrongerBible

ge'ut

גֵּאוּת

HebrewH1348“majesty, pride, ...”

Appears 8 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Psa 17:10Psa 89:9(10)Psa 93:1Isa 9:18(17)Isa 12:5Isa 26:10Isa 28:1Isa 28:3
Root family
Word studygay-OOTnoun

What ge'ut means

a rising up high: the majesty God wears, the swollen pride of anyone who claims it, or the literal surge of sea and smoke

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled

The picture behind this word is physical height. The family of words it belongs to describes water heaving up, smoke boiling upward, a plant shooting above everything around it. All eight uses of this noun keep that image somewhere in view, even when what rises is God's own greatness or a human heart.

What decides whether the rising is glorious or damning is who is doing it. The same noun does three jobs:

  • God's majesty, the height only he can rightly occupy, as when Psalm 93:1 says the LORD reigns robed in it
  • a person's or a city's arrogance, that same height claimed by someone with no right to it, as when Isaiah calls Samaria a crown of pride
  • a plain physical swelling, the sea heaving up or smoke rolling skyward, with nothing praised or blamed

The word itself never changes meaning between these. What changes is whether the claim to be high is true. That is why Isaiah can charge the wicked with refusing to look at this quality in the LORD (Isaiah 26:10) and, two chapters later, hang the same word around the necks of drunken officials (Isaiah 28:1).

This is the rarest of the three nouns built on this root, and it stays inside poetry: only the Psalms and Isaiah use it. Its commoner relatives גָּאוֹן and גַּאֲוָה cover the same ground far more often, while the adjective גֵּאֶה is locked onto the bad sense alone and is never said of God.

Nuances

1amajesty: the exalted greatness that belongs to God alone, whether worn by him or displayed in what he does
TranslatabilityApproximate
Psa 93:1Isa 12:5Isa 26:10
1barrogance: the swollen self-importance of a person or a city, lifted to a height it has no right to
TranslatabilityApproximate
Psa 17:10Isa 28:1Isa 28:3
1ca swelling: the literal rising up of water or smoke, with nothing praised or blamed
TranslatabilityDirect
Psa 89:9(10)Isa 9:18(17)

What scholars say about ge'ut

The lexica are agreed on the derivation and the range. BDB, HALOT, and DCH all take גֵּאוּת as a noun of the root גאה, "to rise up, be high, grow tall," and divide its eight occurrences among majesty of God (Ps 93:1; Isa 26:10, with Isa 12:5 גֵּאוּת עָשָׂה "he has done majestically"), physical rising or swelling (Ps 89:10 MT of the sea, Isa 9:17 MT of smoke), and human pride (Ps 17:10; Isa 28:1, 3). Kellermann (TDOT) and Smith and Hamilton (NIDOTTE) treat the bipolarity of the whole root as a single semantic field whose charge is fixed by the subject: rising that is proper in YHWH is usurpation in a creature, and the adjective גֵּאֶה, which never takes a divine subject, marks the pejorative pole lexically. Gesenius18 and NIDOTTE note a statistical differentiation among the three nouns, with גֵּאוּת patterning like the broader גָּאוֹן rather than the pejorative-leaning גַּאֲוָה; HALOT and DCH prefer to treat the nouns as more fully overlapping and let context decide.

Two local points of exegetical discussion touch this word without unsettling its sense. In Isa 12:5 the noun functions as what YHWH has done rather than what he possesses, which is why the versions render it adverbially ("he has done gloriously") or as a plural of deeds ("excellent things"); the lexica nonetheless file it under the majesty sense. In Isa 28:1, 3 the phrase עֲטֶרֶת גֵּאוּת stands in parallel with צְבִי תִפְאַרְתּוֹ, "the fading flower of its glorious beauty," and commentators on Isaiah (Wildberger; Blenkinsopp) read the crown imagery as at once a description of Samaria's genuine splendor in its setting and a mockery of the festal garlands of its drunken elite, so the phrase carries both edges rather than a flat pejorative.

Sources

  • BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. גֵּאוּתlexicon
  • HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner-Stamm), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, 1:168-170, s.v. גֵּאוּתlexicon
  • David J. A. Clines (ed.), The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, 2:293-298, s.v. גֵּאוּתlexicon
  • Gesenius, Hebraisches und Aramaisches Handworterbuch uber das Alte Testament, 18th ed., s.v. גֵּאוּתlexicon
  • D. Kellermann, "gaʾah," Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, 2:344-350theological-dictionary
  • Gary V. Smith and Victor P. Hamilton, "גאה," New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, 1:785-789theological-dictionary
  • Hans Wildberger, Isaiah 28-39, Continental Commentary, on Isa 28:1-4commentary
  • Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1-39, Anchor Bible 19 (2000), on Isa 28:1-4commentary

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of גֵּאוּת

f s construct

גֵּאוּת

Psa 89:9, Isa 9:18, Isa 26:10, Isa 28:1, Isa 28:3

f s absolute

גֵּאוּת

Psa 17:10, Psa 93:1, Isa 12:5