exile: the forced removal of a people from their homeland, and by extension the deportees themselves
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
The word comes from a verb meaning to be stripped bare or uncovered, and from there to be carried off into exile. As a noun it names that carrying-off: a people torn from their land and resettled under a foreign power. In the Bible it points again and again to one event, Judah's deportation to Babylon in the sixth century BC, the great catastrophe that reshaped Israel's story.
From there the word does something many languages do naturally: it comes to stand for the people the event produced. "The exiles of Judah in Babylon" is not a condition but a community, the men and women living out their days far from home. The deportation and the deported are the same idea seen from two sides, which is why one word carries both.
It gathers in the prophets and in the record-keeping of the exile. Ezekiel and the historical books count the years "from the captivity of King Jehoiachin," making the exile the calendar's starting point. Amos uses it for whole populations of other nations carried off; Isaiah, for the captives a conqueror finally lets go. Alongside it stands the more common exile word גּוֹלָה, which covers much the same ground, and the broader war word שְׁבִי for prisoners taken by force.
Nuances
1athe exiles: the community of people carried off from their land, taken together as a body
points specifically to a people's deportation from their land, above all Judah's removal to BabylonJer 29:22
can stand for the deported people themselves, a whole community carried offAmo 1:6
Both
both describe people carried off and held under a foreign powerIsa 20:4
Only captivity
the English word suggests any imprisonment or bondage, missing that this is a whole community uprooted to a foreign land
“exile”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“exiles”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“captives”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How galut differs from similar Hebrew words
גּוֹלָהthe more common noun for exile and the exile community, nearly interchangeable with this word but far more frequent and the standard term for the settled body of deportees
Marks the deportation as a fixed point in time, the event used to count years from, as in dating Ezekiel's visions by the years since the king and people were carried off.Ezk 1:2Ezk 33:21Ezk 40:1
Both
Both name those carried off into the Babylonian captivity, the population stripped from Judah and resettled abroad.Est 2:6Jer 52:31
Names the exiles as a settled community, a body of people living together in deportation: the returning assembly in Ezra and the fellow deportees among whom Ezekiel lived.Ezr 2:1Ezk 11:24
Used for the act of going into exile itself, the carrying away of a people from their land.Nam 3:10Amo 1:15
שְׁבִיcaptives or captivity in the general sense of prisoners seized in war, without the specific framing of deportation and exile that this word carries
Names the deportation of Israel and Judah in particular, and the exiled people as one community: "the captivity of Judah," "the captivity of this host of the children of Israel."Jer 24:5Oba 1:20
Marks an era, so writers date events by it: "in the year of the captivity" of Jehoiachin becomes a fixed point on the calendar.2Ki 25:27Ezk 1:2Ezk 40:1
Both
Both name people forcibly carried off from their land by a conquering empire; Isaiah 20:4 sets them in parallel, the Egyptians led away as prisoners and the Cushites as exiles by the king of Assyria.Isa 20:4
Covers prisoners taken in any war by any army, Israel's own included, not only the Judean exile: the women seized from Midian, a captive bride taken from a defeated enemy.Num 31:12Deu 21:10
Treats the captives as the human plunder of battle, counted and carried off alongside the cattle and goods.Num 31:26Deu 28:41
Names an event and a stretch of time rather than a person, so it works as a calendar marker: years are counted from the deportation of King Jehoiachin.Ezk 1:22Ki 25:27Ezk 40:1
Is collective before it is individual, standing for a whole deported population as a single body, even an entire community handed over at once.Jer 24:5Amo 1:6
Always involves removal from home to someone else's country, so relief means going back rather than merely being let out.Isa 45:13Oba 1:20
Can be attached to the peoples Israel watched suffer, naming the columns of Egyptians and Cushites marched away by an empire.Isa 20:4
Both
Both describe people held by a foreign power against their will, and both look for a release that God himself grants rather than one the captors offer.Zec 9:12Isa 45:13
Both serve the prophets as measures of imperial cruelty, whether the tyrant who never opened the door for those he seized or the trader who sold off a captured population.Isa 14:17Amo 1:6
English versions draw on the same small pool of words for both, "prisoner", "captive", "captivity", so the page in English rarely shows which of the two is actually present.Zec 9:11Jer 40:1
Names an individual person held under lock and chain in an actual place of confinement, which is why it is the word for the men shut up with Joseph in the royal jail.Gen 39:20Gen 39:22
Belongs to the poetry of pity, where the bound are listed alongside the poor, the dying and the forgotten as people God stoops to hear.Psa 69:33Psa 102:20
Pictures the physical misery of restraint itself, sitting in the dark bound with iron, or resting at last where the slave driver's shout cannot reach.Psa 107:10Job 3:18
Reaches past Israel's national story to any human being under restraint anywhere, so it can speak of "all the prisoners of the earth" as one class of people.Lam 3:34
Only this word names the deportation as a fixed event that a calendar can count from. Kings, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel all date years by it, so that "the twenty fifth year of our exile" works the way a nation's founding date works.2Ki 25:27Jer 52:31Ezk 1:2Ezk 33:21Ezk 40:1
It can name a settled community that goes on living abroad, identified by the country it now sits in and given a future there. Jeremiah calls the deportees in Babylon good figs and writes to them where they live, and Obadiah promises this body of people the towns they will one day hold.Jer 24:5Jer 29:22Oba 1:20Isa 45:13
It belongs to the language of empires moving whole peoples across borders, and it is used of nations other than Israel: a coastal city hands an entire community over to Edom, and Assyria marches Egypt and Cush away.Amo 1:6Amo 1:9Isa 20:4Jer 40:1
Both
Both name people carried off by force and count them as one body rather than as so many individuals, which is why English can render each of them "captives".Jer 24:52Ch 28:5
Both swing between the people and their condition, so that in one verse the word means the group and in another it means the state of being held far from home. That is why English Bibles render each of them "captivity" in some places and "captives" in others.2Ki 25:27Neh 4:4
Both turn up in oracles against the nations, where losing your people to an enemy is the announced judgment on a country.Amo 1:6Jer 48:46
This is the battlefield word: the captives are one of the two kinds of takings an army comes home with, set down beside the plunder in front of the officials and named in the same breath as the slain.2Ch 28:14Deu 32:422Ch 28:5
The group is close at hand, a crowd standing in front of people who can sort through it and act on it one person at a time. A soldier picks out a woman he wants to marry, and men clothe the naked, feed them, and carry the weak ones home on donkeys.Deu 21:112Ch 28:15
The seizure it names can be undone at once, and it can happen between neighbors rather than between an empire and a subject nation. In 2 Chronicles 28 the captives are fellow Israelites, and a prophet and the leaders order them sent straight back home.2Ch 28:112Ch 28:132Ch 28:15
galut in the other biblical languages
αἰχμαλωσίαGreek“captivity”the Greek word for captivity that renders this term in the Greek Old Testament, covering both the state and the body of captives
Names the exile in particular: being deported from one's own land and resettled in a foreign one, above all the carrying of Judah off to Babylon.2Ki 25:27Jer 24:5
Becomes a way of marking time, so that events are dated to the year of "the captivity" and the deportation turns into the reference point of a whole era.Ezk 1:2Ezk 33:21
Stands for a whole community carried off together, an entire people uprooted rather than a scattering of individual prisoners.Amo 1:6Oba 1:20
Both
Both can mean the captives themselves as a single body, a group of people carried off, and not only the abstract condition.Isa 20:4Eph 4:8
Both also name the state of being a captive held under a conqueror's power.Jer 52:31Rev 13:10
Carries the flavor of war-capture: a conqueror leading his prisoners along in a victory train as the spoils of battle.Eph 4:8
Names captivity as the general lot of a prisoner, a condition anyone may be handed, with no tie to a particular land or a specific deportation.Rev 13:10
μετοικεσίαGreek“deportation”the Greek word for a deportation or removal to a new home, used for the exile as a historical event, as in the deportation to Babylon
גָּלוּת names the lasting condition of captivity, and Scripture counts time by it, dating events by the years since a people went into exile, as in reckoning from the captivity of Jehoiachin.2Ki 25:27Ezk 33:21
By extension it names the exiled people themselves as a body, the deported community, so a nation can hand over "the whole captivity" or speak of the captives of Judah living in Babylon.Amo 1:6Jer 28:4
It is applied to the deportations of other nations too, not only Judah's, reaching to the captive population of Egypt and to peoples traded away by their neighbors.Isa 20:4Amo 1:9
Both
Both words point to the same great uprooting of Judah to Babylon. The Greek word is the New Testament's term for that deportation, while the Hebrew word reckons its years and names those it carried off.Mat 1:112Ki 25:27
μετοικεσία names the deportation as one fixed, datable event that marks off an era. Matthew's genealogy turns it into a hinge of history, counting the generations up to the removal to Babylon and away from it again.Mat 1:17
The stress falls on the act of being carried across to a new place to live. The word is built from the idea of a change of dwelling, so it pictures the transporting itself, the moment a people is moved to Babylon.Mat 1:12Mat 1:11
What scholars say about galut
The noun גָּלוּת is an abstract formation from the root גלה, whose semantic movement runs from "be uncovered, laid bare" to "be removed, go into exile." Standard lexica (BDB, HALOT, DCH) register two closely bound uses: the abstract state or act of exile, and, by metonymy, the exiles as a collective body. It concentrates in exilic and post-exilic contexts, notably the dating formulae of 2 Kings, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel that count from Jehoiachin's deportation. It stands beside the more frequent גּוֹלָה, with which it is largely synonymous, and the broader term שְׁבִי for war-captives; Isaiah 20:4 sets גָּלוּת (Cush) in parallel with שְׁבִי (Egypt). The Septuagint typically renders the word-group with αἰχμαλωσία and, for the historical deportation, μετοικεσία.