to hew or chop something down by force: to fell it, break it off, or shatter it so it topples or is destroyed
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
At its core this word names a single, forceful action: a chopping or hewing stroke that brings something down or snaps a piece off. It is never a gentle trimming. Whatever it touches ends up felled, broken, or in ruins, and the stroke that does it is decisive and violent.
One word covers a surprisingly wide range of targets because they all invite the same physical gesture. Scripture uses it in three main arenas:
felling trees and forests, where tall timber is chopped down until it crashes to the ground
hacking apart the objects of false worship, where reformers take axes to idols, altars, and the wooden poles set up for pagan rites
breaking off horns, an arm, iron bars, or a shepherd's staff, where the snapping of something solid becomes a picture of a power being destroyed
The thread running through all three is the felling itself. A cut idol pole and a cut horn are the same motion as a cut tree, so the same word carries the reader from the literal woodcutting to its use as a picture of ruin. It is a close cousin of כָּרַת and נָתַץ, but it keeps its own flavor: not removing a person or tearing down a building, but chopping a standing thing through until it falls.
Nuances
1ato fell a tree or forest: to hew down what stands tall
TranslatabilityDirect
Isa 9:10(9)Isa 10:33
1bto hack down and destroy the objects of false worship, such as idols, altars, and sacred poles
Deu 7:5Deu 12:32Ch 14:3(2)2Ch 31:12Ch 34:42Ch 34:7Ezk 6:6Amo 3:14*
1cto cut off or break something solid as a picture of shattering a power
means hewing or snapping a projecting part off, such as a horn or an armPsa 75:10
Both
both describe removing something by a decisive cutJer 48:25
Only cut off
English "cut off" often means to interrupt, isolate, or excommunicate someone, which this word does not mean
“hew down”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“cut asunder”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How gada differs from similar Hebrew words
כָּרַתThe broad word for cutting off, which also means removing a person from the community and, idiomatically, making a covenant; this word stays physical, chopping a standing thing down.
נָתַץTo tear or pull down a built structure such as an altar or wall; this word instead chops or hews an object down or snaps a piece off it.
קָצַץTo chop or lop off, often extremities like hands or thumbs; it overlaps closely, but this word leans toward felling or breaking apart what stands tall.
This is the word for demolishing the furniture of false worship. Sacred pillars, carved poles, incense stands, and the horns of an altar are the things it hacks down.Deu 7:5Deu 12:32Ch 34:4Amo 3:14
It cuts through metal as readily as wood, so it can be used of iron bars and bronze gates snapping apart.Psa 107:16Isa 45:2
It is the standard picture for strength ended for good, with the might of a person, a king, or a nation broken off like a horn or a shepherd's staff.1Sa 2:31Psa 75:10Jer 48:25Zec 11:10
The interest falls on what is now missing rather than on the labor of cutting, so it can report a tribe lost to Israel or a proud figure brought crashing to the ground.Jdg 21:6Isa 14:12
Both
Both describe an axe taken to standing timber until the tree comes down.Isa 9:10Deu 19:5
Both can picture an army falling on a country the way woodcutters fall on a forest.Isa 10:33Jer 46:22
It names a job and the people who hold it, the woodcutters of a household or a labor force, fixed in the standing phrase "hewers of wood and drawers of water".Deu 29:11Jos 9:21Jos 9:272Ch 2:10
It covers the ordinary business of getting firewood and timber, the errand a man goes into the forest to do, or the chore a people will no longer need to do.Deu 19:5Ezk 39:10
It can mean cutting material to shape rather than bringing something down, as with pillars carved for the corner of a palace.Psa 144:12
גדע is the ordinary word for hewing down and cutting off what stands, above all in acts of destruction: hacking apart pagan altars and chopping down idol-poles.Deu 7:52Ch 31:1
It reaches into figurative severing, where something firm is cut away: a horn of strength snapped off, a covenant broken.Psa 75:10Jer 48:25
Even solid barriers yield to it, with iron bars cut clean through.Psa 107:16Isa 45:2
Both
Both can describe felling trees or forest growth with a blade, and Isaiah sets them side by side: the high boughs are lopped off, then the dense thickets of the forest are cut down with iron.Isa 10:33Isa 10:34
נקף most often means to go around or encircle rather than to cut: an army compasses a city, and the ark is carried around its walls.Jos 6:32Ki 6:14
It pictures enemies or troubles closing in a ring around a person.Psa 17:9Psa 22:16
It also names the recurring round of the calendar, the cycle of feasts coming around again.Isa 29:1Job 1:5
gada in the other biblical languages
ἐκκόπτωGreek“to prevent”The main Greek verb for cutting down or cutting off, used of felling a fruitless tree; it is the closest counterpart for the felling sense.
The Hebrew verb is the standard word for demolishing the equipment of rival worship. Sacred poles and carved images are chopped down as Israel clears the land, and again whenever a reforming king purges the country, always alongside other verbs of smashing and burning.Deu 7:5Deu 12:32Ch 34:4Ezk 6:6
The Hebrew verb carries the recurring image of a horn hacked off, which is how the Old Testament pictures power being stripped away: the horns of the wicked, the horn of a defeated nation, the horn of Israel itself, even the projecting horns of an altar sheared off so it can no longer function.Psa 75:10Jer 48:25Lam 2:3Amo 3:14
The Hebrew verb reaches beyond wood to hard metal and to whatever is toughest, which shows that the force of the stroke is what it carries: bars of iron are broken through, and the hammer that had battered the whole earth is itself smashed to pieces.Psa 107:16Isa 45:2Jer 50:23
The Hebrew verb names a staged, symbolic breaking: a shepherd snaps his staff in two on purpose, and the snapping itself announces that an agreement is finished. The act is meant to be watched, and the broken object is the message.Zec 11:10Zec 11:14
Both
Both verbs are the ordinary word for felling a standing tree in their own language, and both put that felled tree to the same use, as a picture of something tall and confident brought to the ground. English Bibles reach for the same words for either one, "hew down" and "cut down".Isa 10:33Isa 14:12Mat 3:10Luk 13:7
Both can sever a member from the larger body it belonged to, and in both the loss is spoken of as settled rather than temporary: one tribe is gone from Israel, and branches no longer draw anything from the tree that carried them.Jdg 21:6Rom 11:22
Both stretch past wood and flesh to things that cannot be struck at all, so the cutting becomes a way of saying that something has been taken away for good: the strength of a family line, or a rival's chance to make a boast.1Sa 2:312Co 11:12
Only the Greek verb turns the cutting on the person being addressed: a hand or a foot that keeps dragging someone into sin is to be cut off and thrown away, because losing the limb costs less than losing everything. The Hebrew verb is never used this way, of a person taking a blade to their own body.Mat 5:30Mat 18:8
The Greek verb belongs to a fixed warning about an unfruitful tree, where the felling is only the first half of the sentence and the fire finishes it. Cutting is named for the sake of the disposal that follows, so the tree is not merely damaged but taken out of the ground and burned.Mat 3:10Mat 7:19Luk 3:9
The Greek verb can describe a cut that serves a new placement rather than ruin: branches are cut out of the wild olive precisely so they can be grafted into the cultivated one. The Hebrew verb has no constructive use of this kind; where it strikes, nothing is being prepared for replanting.Rom 11:24
What scholars say about gada
The standard lexica treat גָּדַע as a single verb meaning to hew or chop down, felling something that stands or breaking off a projecting part. HALOT and BDB catalogue its objects: trees and forests, the wooden and projecting furniture of pagan worship (sacred poles, incense stands, the horns of an altar), and, by extension, horns, an arm, iron bars, and a shepherd's staff as images of shattered power. The verb clusters in the accounts of cultic reform and in oracles of judgment, where the felling is itself an act of destruction. There is no scholarly dispute over its basic sense.