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גּוֹלָה

exile

also: exiles, captivity fuller range ↓

H1473 Strong's Hebrew
gôwlâh Transliteration
/go-law'/ Pronunciation
Usage in the Hebrew Bible 43 appearances

Compare with another word →

About this entry

At a glance — auto-summarized from this page’s data, not written by a person. Every figure links to its source below. This summary describes the numbers; it doesn’t interpret them.

גולה — transliterated gôwlâh — is a Hebrew noun carrying the sense “exile.” Translators differ — “captivity” in the King James Version, then “exile” (Berean Standard Bible), as the renderings breakdown shows. With 42 verses in 10 books, it is a moderately common word in the Hebrew Bible. Its uses concentrate in Ezra (29% of all occurrences). It also covers “exiles” and “captivity”, alongside “exile” — see its full sense range. See the sense tree, 42-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.

Gloss history

Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship

Strong's · 1890
captive
Modern gloss
exile
Strong's 1890 sometimes compressed multiple senses — or homonymous roots — under one number, and used 19th-century English phrasing that no longer carries the same connotation. The modern gloss reflects current BDB scholarship; open the Lexicon Entry tab for the full sense breakdown. Download share card

About this word

Strong's H1473 catalogs a Hebrew word from the Hebrew Old Testament.

These counts are not copied from any lexicon or concordance. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged Hebrew Old Testament. What Lemma adds →

42
distinct verses
The word appears in 42 distinct verses.
10 / 39
OT books
The word appears in 10 of 39 Old Testament books.
2 Kings 24:14
first appearance
The earliest occurrence is in 2 Kings 24:14.
Zechariah 14:2
last appearance
The latest occurrence is in Zechariah 14:2.
#837
by frequency
Top 1000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 837 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).

View all 42 occurrences in the concordance →


Most concentrated in

By section of the Old Testament

  • Pentateuch 0 · 0%
  • Historical 18 · 43%
  • Wisdom 0 · 0%
  • Prophets 24 · 57%

By traditional corpus

Conventional, traditional groupings — biblical authorship is debated, so this is a traditional corpus grouping, not an authorship claim. Each share is this word’s portion of its verses in that division of the Hebrew canon. Each figure is a share of the word’s 42 distinct verses.

  • Prophets (Nevi'im) 27 verses · 64%
  • Writings (Ketuvim) 15 verses · 36%

How translations render this word

Counts come from each version’s own published word-to-Strong’s tagging or interlinear alignment — an approximate guide to how each version renders this word, not a word-level alignment the data otherwise carries. Because each total is that version’s own tagged count, the per-version totals vary from one another and need not match the appearance or distinct-verse counts above. These counts may also differ from a printed concordance because Lemma counts each distinctly tagged rendering and does not collapse phrase taggings into a single head-word total. This is a fixed set of word-tagged versions (KJV, ASV, BSB, ULT) and does not change with the reading translation you choose elsewhere. Each version’s license is shown beside its name below (and on Sources).

  • King James Version: Captivity 20×, Had been carried away 6×, Removing 2×
  • American Standard Version: Captivity 21×, Removing 3×, All them of the captivity 2×
  • Berean Standard Bible: Exile 17×, Exiles 15×
  • unfoldingWord Literal Text: Exile 17×, Exiles 11×, Captives 3×

King James Version Public Domain

Renders H1473 across 41 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Captivity” 20×
  • “Had been carried away” 6×
  • “Removing” 2×

Plus 13 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.

American Standard Version Public Domain

Renders H1473 across 41 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Captivity” 21×
  • “Removing” 3×
  • “All them of the captivity” 2×
  • “Captives” 2×
  • “Had been carried away” 2×

Plus 11 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.

Berean Standard Bible Public Domain

Renders H1473 across 37 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Exile” 17×
  • “Exiles” 15×

Plus 5 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 6 further occurrences.

unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Renders H1473 across 34 tagged occurrences — most commonly:

  • “Exile” 17×
  • “Exiles” 11×
  • “Captives” 3×
  • “Captivity” 2×

Plus 1 rendering that appears only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.


Senses in the full BDB

What do BDB’s symbols mean?

BDB uses these scholarly abbreviations:

Symbol Meaning
𝔊 the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation, LXX)
𝔙 the Vulgate (the Latin translation)
𝔖 the Syriac version (the Peshitta)
𝔗 the Targum (the Aramaic translation)
ψ the Psalms
√ root (the underlying root or stem)
‖ parallel passage (a synonymous or contrasted parallel)
† the dagger: every passage where the word occurs is cited

The 2 senses and sub-senses the full Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency), with BDB’s own verbatim wording and sub-sense lettering. Shown in Hebrew script with BDB’s own scholarly abbreviations. The condensed entry is in the Lexicon Entry tab. See also the Forms in the corpus table below.

  • 1. coll. exiles, Est 2:6 Je 29:1 Ez 1:1; 3:11, 15; 11:24, 25 Na 3:10; כל־הגולה Je 28:6; 29:4, 20, 31, קהל הגולה Ezr 10:8. e.g. Esther 2:6
  • 2. abstract, exile, Ezr 6:21; 9:4; 10:6 Zc 6:10; הלך בגולה go into exile Je 48:11; 49:3; Ez 12:11; 25:3 Am 1:15; יצא בג׳ Je 29:16; 48:7 Zc 14:2; הוליך גולה carry into exile 2 K 24:15, הביא ג׳ 2 K 24:16, הוציא ג׳ Ez 12:4, העלה ג׳ Ezr 1:11; כלי גולה equipment for exile Je 46:19 Ez 12:3, 4, 7; עד הגלה until the exile 1 Ch 5:22; בני הגולה exiles Ezr 4:1; 6:19, 20; 8:35; 10:7, 16; שׁבי הגולה captivity of the exile Ezr 2:1 Ne 7:6. e.g. Ezra 6:21

Senses from the full Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon (Brown, Driver, Briggs; Oxford 1906 — public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). Full attribution on Sources.


Word origin

n.f. exiles, exile—(cf. Arabic جَالٍ one emigrating, جَالِيَةٌ a company of exiles)—Je 28:6 + 38 times, גֹּלָה Is 49:21 1 Ch 5:22 Est 2:6 Na 3:10;—

— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.

Derived from גלה (gâlâh) (H1540) — to uncover.

Part of speech: Noun Feminine TWOT: 350a


Jastrow Dictionary

A second Hebrew/Aramaic lexicon for comparison, covering Aramaic and post-biblical (Talmudic, Targumic, Midrashic) usage that the biblical-Hebrew BDB does not. Matched by lemma rather than by Strong’s number, so a lemma may carry more than one Jastrow headword (shown separately below), and the entries cover usage well beyond the Bible.

גּוֹלֶה

  • , part. of גָּלָה.

גּוֹלָה

  • exile, esp. (with or without בני) the diaspora, Jews living abroad, esp. Babylonians. Ab. Zar. 30ᵇ. R. Hash. 18ᵇ באת שמועה לַגּ׳ the report came to the captivity (in Babylonia); a. fr.—ראש ג׳ (ch. ריש גלותא) chief of the Babylonian Jews, Resh G’lutha. Snh. 38ᵃ; Ḥull. 92ᵃ ר׳ ג׳ שבבבל; a. e.—עולי ג׳ those returning from Babylonian captivity. B. Bath. 15ᵃ bot.—V. גָּלוּת.

גּוּלָּה

  • cup, bowl. Lev. R. s. 32, a. e. (used for play on גּולֶה, a. גּוֹאֲלָהּ), v. גּוֹאֵל.

A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature (Marcus Jastrow; London, Luzac, 1903) — Public Domain. Digitized via Sefaria. Digitized via Sefaria. Full attribution on Sources.


Forms in the corpus

The 26 distinct written forms H1473 takes in the Hebrew Bible, most frequent first — each parse links to that state’s occurrences in the concordance. Hebrew forms include their vowel points and cantillation, so a single lemma takes many written forms.

Form Parsing Example Uses
הַ/גּוֹלָ֔ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Ezekiel 11:24 8
הַ/גּוֹלָה֙ Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Ezekiel 3:11 3
בַּ/גּוֹלָ֔ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Jeremiah 48:7 2
בַּ/גּוֹלָֽה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Ezekiel 25:3 2
גוֹלָה֙ Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Ezekiel 12:7 2
הַ/גּוֹלָ֑ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Ezekiel 11:25 2
הַ/גּוֹלָ֖ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Ezekiel 1:1 2
הַ/גּוֹלָ֜ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Ezekiel 3:15 2
הַ/גּוֹלָֽה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Ezra 10:6 2
הַ֨/גּוֹלָ֔ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Jeremiah 29:4 2
בַּ/גּוֹלָ֑ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Amos 1:15 1
בַּ/גּוֹלָ֣ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Jeremiah 49:3 1
בַּ/גּוֹלָ֥ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Ezekiel 12:11 1
גּוֹלֶ֔ה Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 2 Kings 24:14 1
גּוֹלָ֖ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 2 Kings 24:16 1
גּוֹלָ֥ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 2 Kings 24:15 1
גּוֹלָֽה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Ezekiel 12:4 1
גוֹלָ֔ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Ezekiel 12:3 1
גוֹלָ֛ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Ezekiel 12:4 1
הַ/גֹּלָֽה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 1 Chronicles 5:22 1
הַ/גֹּלָה֙ Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Esther 2:6 1
הַ/גּוֹלָ֗ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Jeremiah 29:1 1
הַ/גּוֹלָה֒ Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Ezra 10:16 1
וּ/בַ/גּוֹלָ֖ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Jeremiah 48:11 1
לַ/גֹּלָה֙ Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Nahum 3:10 1
מֵֽ/הַ/גּוֹלָ֔ה Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute Ezra 6:21 1

Same root — word family

Other BDB entries built from the same root as H1473, grouped by Strong’s listed origin. These share a root / origin per the lexicon — not necessarily a shared meaning. Each links to that word’s own entry.

Derives from

Shares the same root

Proper names from this root

People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.

Compare all same-root words → Showing 4 of 9 — not the complete family. 4 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.


Septuagint verse parallels

This word appears in 37 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 42 Hebrew verses it occurs in. You can read those verses in Greek by switching the Old Testament edition to the Septuagint.

Read these verses in the Septuagint

This is a verse-level parallel only — the same verses exist in both the Hebrew and Greek Old Testaments. No word-level Hebrew↔Greek correspondence is claimed: the data carries no such alignment, so no Greek word is shown as this Hebrew word’s translation. Coverage is not total — the Septuagint omits the deuterocanon and renumbers the Psalms, so some Hebrew verses have no direct Greek parallel.

Reading settings

Reading text

Shown beneath each verse's original-language words.

Old Testament
Old Testament edition

Read the OT as the Masoretic Hebrew (MT) or the Greek Septuagint (LXX).

English shown for the Greek Septuagint (in the Hebrew ↔ Greek comparison).

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