גִּיחַ
to burst forth
‘to burst forth’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Hiphil
- The causative active stem (“he caused / brought about”).
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”). Here: ‘impf.’
Form
- Sequential Imperfect
- An imperfect with prefixed waw — the standard past-narrative form (waw-consecutive imperfect).
- Imperative
- A direct command (“write!”).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
Person
- 2nd Person
- The one addressed (“you”).
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Every verse where H1518 appears in the Book of Job — 2 distinct verses. Click any verse to open its interlinear word-by-word view. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context — . Each verse’s Hebrew form is shown with its reference; the English is not keyword-highlighted, since the data carries no word-level English alignment. Use “Compare translations” on any verse to read it across multiple English versions. This concordance covers the Hebrew Bible; Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) occurrences are not indexed here.
Job
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.
גיח — transliterated gîyach — is a Hebrew verb carrying the sense “to burst forth.” It first appears in Judges 20:33. With 6 verses in 5 books, it is an uncommon word in the Hebrew Bible. Its uses concentrate in Job (33% of all occurrences). It is not a single-sense word — see its full sense range. Each statement above links to its evidence; the full detail follows below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H1518 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 →
- 6
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 6 distinct verses.
- 5 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 5 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #3,040
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 3,040 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 6 occurrences in the concordance →
By section of the Old Testament
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 6 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 3 verses · 50%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 3 verses · 50%
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).
BDB lists this Strong’s number as 2 distinct words (homographs). Each count above pools all of them and is not split by sense — see the Senses section below. A low-frequency rendering may belong to a different one of those words, not the primary meaning.
- King James Version†: Brake forth 1×, Came forth 1×, He can draw up 1×
- American Standard Version†: Brake forth 2×
- Berean Standard Bible†: Agony 1×, Brought me forth 1×, Burst forth 1×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text†: Are the one pulling me out 1×, Burst forth 1×, Gushed 1×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H1518 across 6† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H1518 across 5† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 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 H1518 across 6† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H1518 across 6† tagged occurrences — most commonly:
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 5 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.
גיח I burst forth (cf. NöZMG 1883, 538
Qal
- impf. יָגִיחַ Jb 40:23, 2 ms. וַתָּ֫גַח Ez 32:2; Imv. fs. גֹּ֫חִי Mi 4:10; Inf. sf. (בְּ)גִיחוֹ Jb 38:8; Pt. sf. גֹּחִ֫י ψ 22:10 (but cf. infr.);— e.g. Job 40:23
- 1. intrans. burst forth, of dashing river (a very Jordan) Jb 40:23; of sea fig. as babe from womb Jb 38:8; e.g. Job 40:23
- 2. trans.
- a. draw forth from womb (subj. י׳) ψ 22:10 (where read גָּחִ֫י pt. from גּוּחַ, or regard גֹּחִי as metapl., as if from גחה? v. De & Checrit. note) cf. ψ 71:6; also e.g. Psalms 22:10
- b. thrust forth, bring forth, fig. of travail, applied to Jerusalem in distress Mi 4:10 (cf. Sta§ 599 b Köf. 505); burst forth with rivers (fig. of Pharaoh under image of תַּנִּים) Ez 32:2, but for בנהרותיך (rivers) read prob. בִּנְהִרוֹתֶיךָ Jb 41:12 (nostrils), i.e. snort with thy nostrils, so Ew Co Hi. rather ‘break forth (with that which is to be born),’ but text dub. Hi pt. מֵגִיחַ of troops burst forth Ju 20:33. e.g. Micah 4:10
גיח II loc. (from a spring?) near Gibeon in Benjamin 2 S 2
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
I. vb. burst forth (cf. NöZMG 1883, 538; NH id., Aramaic id., and ܓܳܚ; Ethiopic ጎሐ break forth, of light, etc.)—
II. n.pr.loc. (from a spring?) near Gibeon in Benjamin 2 S 2:24.
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Origin: a primitive root
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.
גִּיחַ
- (cmp. גִּיהַּ)
- 1. to break forth, stir up. Dan. VII, 2. Targ. Job XXXVIII, 8 במִגְחֵיה (h. text בגיחו) when he breaks forth. [Targ. Ps. XLII, 5 למגח Ms., read למחג, v. חגג].—ג׳ קרבא, v. infra. e.g. Daniel 7:2
- 2. (cmp. meanings of בּוּעַ) to low (of oxen). Targ. Job VI, 5 (some ed. יגעי, h. text יגעה).
- , esp. with קרבא (Af. a. Pe.) to attack, fight. Targ. O. Ex. I, 10; XIV, 14. Targ. Y. Gen. XXI, 10.—Targ. Ps. LX, 2 אֲגִיחַ עם (sub. קרבא). Targ. O. Deut. XX, 4; a. fr.—Tosef. Sot. XIII, 5; Sot. 33ᵃ לאָגָחָא קרבא to wage war. Nidd. 65ᵇ כתובה דמַגְחֵי וכ׳ Ar. (ed. מגבי, v. גִּיב, Var. דמגהי) a marriage deed over which they fight much before signing.
- (with קרבא) to be fought. Targ. O. Ex. XVII, 16; a. e.
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 6 distinct written forms H1518 takes in the Hebrew Bible, most frequent first — each parse links to that stem’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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| בְּ֝/גִיח֗/וֹ | Verb, Qal, Infinitive Construct | Job 38:8 | 1 |
| גֹחִ֣/י | Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Construct | Psalms 22:9 | 1 |
| וַ/תָּ֣גַח | Verb, Hiphil, Sequential Imperfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Singular | Ezekiel 32:2 | 1 |
| וָ/גֹ֛חִי | Verb, Qal, Imperative, 2nd Person, Feminine, Singular | Micah 4:10 | 1 |
| יָגִ֖יחַ | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Job 40:23 | 1 |
| מֵגִ֥יחַ | Verb, Hiphil, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Judges 20:33 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H1518, 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.
Derived from this word
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 5 — not the complete family. 2 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 5 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 6 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.
