to shave: to cut the hair off the head, beard, or body, close to the skin, usually with a razor
TranslatabilityDirectCertaintySettled
This word is almost always about hair. It means to take the hair off the head, the beard, or the body and cut it down close to the skin, normally with a razor, rather than merely trimming it. It is a stronger, more deliberate act than shearing an animal (גָּזַז) or tearing hair out by hand (מָרַט).
The same act shows up in very different settings, and the setting is what gives it weight:
Ordinary grooming, as when Joseph shaved and changed clothes before standing in front of Pharaoh.
Ritual purity, as when a person healed of a skin disease shaves off all their hair, or when someone who has finished a special vow to God shaves the head and burns the hair at the altar.
Public humiliation, as when an enemy king shaved off half the beards of David's envoys to shame them.
Mourning, as when men came to the ruined temple with their beards shaved off.
Because hair and especially the beard stood for a person's dignity, having it shaved off by force was a deep insult, not just a change of appearance. The prophet Isaiah even pictures God shaving a whole land bare, using a foreign army as His hired razor.
The word for a clean, close removal of hair with a razor as a rite of purification: the healed skin-diseased person, the Nazirite starting over, and the captive woman all have every hair taken off.Lev 14:8Num 6:9Deu 21:12
The specific word for shaving the beard or grooming the face, whether to make oneself presentable or, forcibly, to shame an enemy.Gen 41:142Sa 10:4Isa 7:20
Both
Both can name the cutting away of hair from the head as an act of grief and mourning.Mic 1:16Jer 41:5
The ordinary word for shearing a flock: clipping the wool off sheep and goats, tied to the season and the setting of the sheepshearers. This use never crosses over to the other word.Gen 31:191Sa 25:2Deu 15:19
Stretches to a figurative cutting down, where a people is cropped away like a shorn fleece even at full strength.Nam 1:12
מָרַטto pull or tear hair out by hand, or to make a surface bare by scraping, rather than cutting it off with a blade
Pulling or tearing hair out by hand, often in grief, mourning, or as a humiliation inflicted on someone.Ezr 9:3Neh 13:25Isa 50:6
A separate sense that has nothing to do with hair: rubbing metal until it is bright, smooth, and polished, whether burnished bronze or a sharpened sword.1Ki 7:45Ezk 21:9Ezk 21:11
קָרַחto be or become bald, or to make bald as a sign of mourning: the resulting bareness, where shaving names the act of cutting the hair off
This is the word for a blade taken to hair, and it normally says exactly what is being cut: the whole head, the beard, the edge of the beard, even the eyebrows and every hair on the body.Lev 14:92Sa 10:4Ezk 44:20
It covers ordinary hair-cutting with no grief in view at all: Joseph making himself presentable before Pharaoh, a healed man washing and cutting off his hair as part of being declared clean, a man cutting his hair when his vow to God is finished, and Absalom's yearly trim of a head of hair grown too heavy.Gen 41:14Lev 14:8Num 6:182Sa 14:26
It is often something done TO a person by somebody else, as force, shame, or a change of status: half the beards of David's envoys cut off to insult him, a captive woman's head cut bare before she can be married, Samson's braids cut off while he slept.2Sa 10:4Deu 21:12Jdg 16:19
Both
Both describe hair coming off the head, and one law for priests sets them side by side: they may not make a bald patch on the head, and they may not cut off the edge of the beard.Lev 21:5
Both belong to the language of grief. Jeremiah forbids mourners to gash themselves or make themselves bald for the dead, and the eighty men who come to the ruined temple in mourning arrive with their beards cut off and their clothes torn.Jer 41:5Jer 16:6
Both serve the prophets as a picture of a people stripped and humiliated: the Lord shaving Judah bare from head to legs with a hired blade, and Zion told to make herself bald over the children she has lost.Isa 7:20Mic 1:16
This word names the bare result rather than the cutting, so it can describe a head worn smooth with no blade anywhere in the picture: Ezekiel says every head in Nebuchadnezzar's army was rubbed bald by hauling loads through the long siege of Tyre.Ezk 29:18
It stays on the head. Where it appears the point is always a scalp stripped bare for everyone to see, never a beard, eyebrows, or body hair, and never the tool used.Jer 16:6Ezk 27:31Mic 1:16
Names the act of cutting hair away with a blade, and it specifies what gets shaved: the head, the beard, the eyebrows, or every hair on the body at once.Lev 14:9Num 6:18Ezk 44:20
Covers shaving that the law positively requires as a step toward being clean again or toward completing a vow, so the razor marks a fresh start rather than a loss.Lev 14:8Num 6:9Lev 13:33
Can be something one person does to another as an insult or a punishment, with the victim shaved against his will.2Sa 10:4Jdg 16:19Isa 7:20
Can be plain grooming with no religious weight at all, simply making oneself presentable.Gen 41:142Sa 14:26
Both
Both name deliberate removal of hair from the head or face, and the priestly law bans them side by side in one sentence: no bald patch on the head, no shaving the edge of the beard.Lev 21:5
Both can signal grief. A shaved beard and a bald head are read the same way by onlookers, as the sign of someone in mourning.Jer 41:5Jer 48:37
Names the bare patch that is left behind rather than the cutting, so it can be spoken of as a condition that comes upon a person or even upon a whole city.Jer 47:5Isa 3:24Ezk 7:18
Is the standard picture of public grief, listed beside sackcloth, wailing, and torn clothes as one of the visible marks of a community in mourning.Amo 8:10Ezk 27:31Isa 22:12
Is never something the law asks for. Where shaving can be commanded, this bald patch only ever shows up as grief or as a foreign mourning custom Israel is warned away from.Deu 14:1Mic 1:16
galaḥ in the other biblical languages
ξυράωGreek“to shave”the ordinary Greek word for shaving hair off, the closest direct counterpart
κείρωGreek“to shear”to shear or cut hair, as of a sheep or in a vow, closer to cutting than to shaving to the skin
What scholars say about galaḥ
The standard lexica (BDB, HALOT) give a single well-defined sense for גלח: to shave, shave off (piel), with the pual for being shaven and the hithpael for shaving oneself or having oneself shaved. The verb belongs to the semantic field of hair-removal alongside גָּזַז (shear) and מָרַט (pull out, make bare), and קָרַח (be bald). Its usage clusters in a few well-attested domains: purity legislation (Leviticus 13-14 on the person healed of a skin affliction, Numbers 6 on the completion of a Nazirite vow, with head and body hair shaved and burnt), the prohibition of certain mourning or pagan shaving practices for priests (Leviticus 21:5;Ezekiel 44:20), grooming (Genesis 41:14), the shaving of a captive woman's head (Deuteronomy 21:12), and shaving as an act of humiliation inflicted on defeated or subjugated men, whose beards symbolized honor (2 Samuel 10:4;1 Chronicles 19:4).Isaiah 7:20 deploys it as a vivid metaphor of judgment, the Lord shaving the land bare with a hired razor, that is, Assyria. Reference works on the cultural setting note the honor attached to the beard in the ancient Near East, which is what makes forced shaving a grave insult.