StrongerBible

gil

גִּיל

HebrewH1524“joy, rejoicing, ...”

Appears 9 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Job 3:22Psa 43:4Psa 45:15(16)Psa 65:12(13)Isa 16:10Jer 48:33Dan 1:10Hos 9:1Jol 1:16
Root family
Names & words formed with this
Word studyGEELnoun

What gil means

1

the loud joy of a celebration: rejoicing that breaks out where others can see and hear it, as at a harvest, a festival, or a procession

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled

This word names the side of joy that shows. Eight of its nine appearances stand for the noisy gladness of an occasion: the shout that goes up over the grape harvest, the singing at the temple feast, the bridal party carrying its happiness into the palace. In seven of those eight it sits right next to the ordinary Hebrew word for gladness (שִׂמְחָה), or next to that word's verb, and where the two are paired the broad word tends to name the feeling while this one names the celebrating that shows it.

Its natural home is the festival calendar, which is exactly why the prophets reach for it to announce that the party is over:

  • the vintage shout is gathered away from Moab's terraces, so that nobody treads the winepress with a cheer (Isaiah 16:10; Jeremiah 48:33)
  • the feasting is cut off from the house of God when the locusts strip the fields bare (Joel 1:16)
  • Israel is ordered to stop celebrating on the threshing floor, because the harvest joy has been aimed at the wrong god (Hosea 9:1)

The celebration is not always solemn and not always right. It can be the wilderness hills putting joy on like a belt (Psalm 65:12), or God himself named as the gladness a worshipper comes to the altar rejoicing in (Psalm 43:4). At its bleakest it is Job's picture of people who dig for death and shout when they finally strike a grave (Job 3:22). The matching verb, "to rejoice" (גִּיל), does the same work across roughly forty five verses, most of them in Psalms and Isaiah.

Nuances

1athe celebration itself: the shouting, singing gladness of a harvest, a feast, or a procession
Psa 43:4Psa 45:15(16)Psa 65:12(13)Isa 16:10Jer 48:33Jol 1:16
1bpaired with the verb for rejoicing to say the joy is unrestrained: to rejoice to the point of shouting
Job 3:22Hos 9:1

Disputed

Whether the lexeme carries a kinetic component of circling or whirling, so that its joy is specifically a dance.

  • majorityThe word denotes loud, festal rejoicing and nothing more. No Biblical Hebrew text uses it of literal circling, the proposed Arabic parallel does not itself mean rejoice, and a reconstructed Grundbedeutung cannot govern attested synchronic usage.; HALOT (Koehler, Baumgartner, Stamm; ET 1994), 1:189-190, s.v. גִּיל I; David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. 2 (Sheffield, 1995), s.v. גיל; Dieter Vetter, "גיל gîl to rejoice," TLOT 1:313-315; James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford, 1961), ch. 6, "Etymologies and Related Arguments"
  • minorityAn original sense of moving in a circle stands behind the root, so the joy it names carries the picture of leaping or whirling.; BDB, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford, 1906), 162, s.v. גִּיל; Wilhelm Gesenius, A Hebrew and English Lexicon, trans. Samuel P. Tregelles (London, 1857), s.v. גּוּל / גִּיל; Theodor Nöldeke, "Untersuchungen zur semitischen Grammatik," ZDMG 37 (1883): 537
  • minorityA mediating position: an original circling or dancing sense may lie behind the root, but every Hebrew occurrence means rejoicing; what the older etymology was reaching for is preserved instead in the word's festal-processional Sitz im Leben and its bodily, public character.; Jan Bergman and Helmer Ringgren, "גִּיל gîl," TDOT 2:469-475; Frank Crüsemann, Studien zur Formgeschichte von Hymnus und Danklied in Israel, WMANT 32 (Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1969)
2

a person's age: the stage of life someone has reached, and so the others who are at that same stage

TranslatabilityDirectCertaintyStrong

This is a different word that happens to be spelled like the joy word. It appears once, in Daniel 1:10, where the palace official in charge of the young captives worries that Daniel and his friends will end up looking thinner and worse than "the young men of your age" if they refuse the royal food.

The standard lexicons list it as its own word rather than a stretch of the joy word, and it matches an Aramaic term for one's age or generation, which fits a book that switches into Aramaic for several chapters. English "age" says what it says, with no celebration in it at all.

Dan 1:10

What scholars say about gil

The lexica are unanimous on the sense: HALOT (1:189-190) gives גִּיל I as "rejoicing, jubilation", BDB (162) as "a rejoicing, joy", and DCH (vol. 2) as "rejoicing, exultation", with all three keeping גִּיל II "circle of life, age" (Dan 1:10) strictly separate as a homonym; BDB's older scheme had connected the two through its proposed "circle" Grundbedeutung, and modern lexica do not. The contested question is etymological rather than semantic. Nöldeke (ZDMG 37 [1883]: 537) supplied the comparative-Semitic basis for a kinetic "circle, whirl" origin by comparison with Arabic jāla; BDB canonized it and Strong's popularized it, but post-Barr Hebraistics treats it as a textbook root fallacy, and DCH's editorial exclusion of cognates, HALOT's caution, and Vetter's TLOT verdict ("popular-etymological speculation") are all methodological corrections. Ringgren (TDOT 2:469-475) allows a possible original "circle, dance" while insisting the attested Hebrew meaning is uniformly "rejoice"; his durable contribution, with Crüsemann, is the form-critical observation that the root has a festal-cultic Sitz im Leben in enthronement psalms, Zion songs, and salvation oracles, and is regularly yoked with שׂמח, שׂושׂ, רנן, and רוע. Vetter presses the distinction further, treating gîl as a marked festal-cultic exclamation term over against the unmarked שׂמח, and Westermann is the notable dissenter who treats the pair as essentially interchangeable hymnic vocabulary. The noun's own distribution supports the festal profile: five of its eight rejoicing occurrences are bound to שִׂמְחָה in a fixed pair, three of them (Isa 16:10; Jer 48:33; Joel 1:16) in judgment oracles that remove vintage and sanctuary festivity, while BDB reads אֱלֵי־גִיל (Job 3:22) and אֶל־גִּיל (Hos 9:1) adverbially. Andersen and Freedman on Hosea 9:1 identify the condemned gîl as threshing-floor fertility-cult rejoicing, which Joel 2:21-23 then reclaims for YHWH. The Septuagint's verdict is corroborative: translators overwhelmingly chose ἀγαλλίασις and ἀγαλλίαμα, Hellenistic forms Bultmann (TDNT 1:19-21) describes as denoting the cultic joy that celebrates the acts of God, marking a perceived difference from the milder εὐφροσύνη used for שִׂמְחָה.

Sources

  • HALOT (Koehler, Baumgartner, Stamm; ET Leiden: Brill, 1994), 1:189-190, s.v. גִּיל I and גִּיל IIlexicon
  • BDB, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906), 162, s.v. גִּילlexicon
  • David J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. 2 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), s.v. גילlexicon
  • Jan Bergman and Helmer Ringgren, "גִּיל gîl," TDOT, trans. John T. Willis (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 2:469-475theological-dictionary
  • Dieter Vetter, "גיל gîl to rejoice," TLOT, trans. Mark E. Biddle (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997), 1:313-315theological-dictionary
  • NIDOTTE, ed. Willem A. VanGemeren (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997), 1:837-839, s.v. גילtheological-dictionary
  • James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), ch. 6monograph
  • Theodor Nöldeke, "Untersuchungen zur semitischen Grammatik," ZDMG 37 (1883): 537article
  • Frank Crüsemann, Studien zur Formgeschichte von Hymnus und Danklied in Israel, WMANT 32 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1969)monograph
  • Francis I. Andersen and David Noel Freedman, Hosea, AB 24 (Garden City: Doubleday, 1980), ad 9:1commentary
  • Rudolf Bultmann, "ἀγαλλιάομαι, ἀγαλλίασις," TDNT, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), 1:19-21theological-dictionary
  • Claus Westermann, Praise and Lament in the Psalms, trans. Keith R. Crim and Richard N. Soulen (Atlanta: John Knox, 1981)monograph

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

All attested forms of גִּיל

m s absolute

גִּיל

Job 3:22, Psa 45:15, Psa 65:12, Isa 16:10, Jer 48:33, Hos 9:1, Jol 1:16

m s construct

גִּילִי

Psa 43:4

m s construct

גִילְכֶם

Dan 1:10