galah

At its core this word takes a covering off something. The picture is physical first: stripping the clothes from a body, pulling back a veil, opening what was shut. From that picture the word reaches into the world of knowledge. To uncover someone's ear is to let them hear what they could not hear before, which is simply to tell them a secret. When God is the one uncovering, he lets people see or know what was beyond their reach, whether by appearing to them, by disclosing his plan to his prophets, or by acting so openly that the whole world sees it.

The senses below all share this one motion of removing a cover. The difference between them is what gets uncovered, a body, a hidden fact, or God himself, and whether the exposure is shameful or saving. The same word that names the disgrace of stripping a person can name the glory of God showing his power before the nations.

The exposure is often unwelcome. Much of the time something is laid bare that should have stayed covered, which is why this word carries a strong note of shame, of sin dragged into the light, and of secrets betrayed.

Here the same verb names one of the central catastrophes of the Hebrew Bible: a people torn off its land and carried away to a foreign country. Used of the people themselves it means to go into exile; used of a conquering king it means to deport them, to carry them away captive. It is the standard word for what Assyria did to the northern kingdom and Babylon did to Judah.

Whether scholars treat this as a second, unrelated word or as a stretched use of the first, the link in thought is easy to feel. To be exiled is to be stripped of home and uncovered before your enemies, removed from the land as a covering is removed from a body. In practice, though, a reader needs a completely different English word here, go into exile or carry away, not uncover, which is why it is kept as its own meaning.