greatness as a quantity you can point to: how great someone or something is, whether God's displayed majesty, a towering tree, or a heart swollen with its own importance
This is the noun that names an amount of greatness. The adjective גָּדוֹל ("great") says that something is great; this word names the greatness itself, so it can be shown to people, given back in praise, or claimed by someone who has no right to it.
Its home is Deuteronomy, where Moses four times points back to what Israel saw, and each time this word stands next to God's strong hand and outstretched arm. The claim is not that God is great in the abstract but that he let his greatness be seen, in the rescue from Egypt and in the fire on the mountain. Two further uses grow out of that: worship hands the greatness back to God (Deuteronomy 32:3, Psalm 150:2), and prayer asks God to act on the scale he has already shown, forgiving as widely as his loyal love reaches (Numbers 14:19) and rescuing prisoners as far as his arm can stretch (Psalm 79:11).
Then the word turns. Ezekiel measures a ruler with it, and the measurement is a trap: Pharaoh is asked whom he resembles in his greatness, is shown a cedar beautiful in its sheer size, and is then told that all that glory and greatness ends underground. Isaiah takes the last step and puts the word inside a person, a heart grown big, which English has to call arrogance. So one noun runs three ways:
- greatness God displays, and worship gives back to him
- greatness a tree or a ruler is admired for, just before the fall
- greatness a heart claims for itself, which is simply pride