גְּלָא
to reveal
‘to reveal’ is one of 3 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Qal verb in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Verb
- An action or state-of-being word.
Stem
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
- Qal Passive
- An archaic passive of the Qal, preserved in a few forms.
- Hiphil
- The causative active stem (“he caused / brought about”).
Form
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
State
- Construct
- A noun bound to a following noun in a possessive / “of” relationship (the construct chain).
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Construct 2 times (22%)
- Verb, Qal Passive, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 2 times (22%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 2 times (22%)
- Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 2 times (22%)
- Verb, Qal, Infinitive Construct 1 time (11%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 9 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H1541 appears — 8 distinct verses across 2 books. 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.
Ezra 2 verses
- Ezra 4:10 הַגְלִי֙ Hiphil pf 3ms and the rest of the nations whom the great and noble Osnappar brought over, and set in the city of Samaria, and in the rest [of the country] beyond the River, and so forth.
- Ezra 5:12 הַגְלִ֥י Hiphil pf 3ms But after that our fathers had provoked the God of heaven to wrath, he gave them into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, the Chaldean, who destroyed this house, and carried the people away into Babylon.
Daniel 6 verses
- Daniel 2:19 גֲלִ֑י Qal Passive pf 3ms Then was the secret revealed to Daniel in a vision of the night. Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven.
- Daniel 2:22 גָּלֵ֥א Qal ptcp.act ms he reveals the deep and secret things; he knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with him.
- Daniel 2:28 גָּלֵ֣א Qal ptcp.act ms but there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets, and he has made known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days. Your dream, and the visions of your head on your bed, are these:
- Daniel 2:29 וְ/גָלֵ֧א conj + Qal ptcp.act ms cs as for you, O king, your thoughts came [into your mind] on your bed, what should happen hereafter; and he who reveals secrets has made known to you what shall happen.
- Daniel 2:30 גֱּלִ֣י Qal Passive pf 3ms But as for me, this secret is not revealed to me for any wisdom that I have more than any living, but to the intent that the interpretation may be made known to the king, and that you may know the thoughts of your heart.
- Daniel 2:47 וְ/גָלֵ֣ה לְ/מִגְלֵ֖א conj + Qal ptcp.act ms cs prep + Qal inf.cs The king answered to Daniel, and said, Of a truth your God is the God of gods, and the Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets, seeing you have been able to reveal this secret.
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.
The Hebrew verb גלה centers on the idea of “to reveal.” The word gravitates to Daniel (75%), then Ezra. It appears 8 verses across 2 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its uncommon vocabulary. Its earliest occurrence is Ezra 4:10. As a verb its force shifts by stem, across 3 stems (Peal, Pᵉ‛îl, and more). For the data behind this summary, explore the sense tree and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H1541 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 →
- 8
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 8 distinct verses.
- 2 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 2 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,481
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,481 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 8 occurrences in the concordance →
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 8 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 8 verses · 100%
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: Revealed 2×
- American Standard Version: Revealed 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Revealer 2×, Reveals 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Reveals 2×, Was revealed 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H1541 across 10 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H1541 across 10 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 8 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 H1541 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H1541 across 10 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 6 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Senses in the full BDB
Hebrew verbs can shift meaning by stem (binyan): Qal is the basic action, Niphal is often passive or reflexive, Piel often intensifies or makes it factitive, and Hiphil is typically causative. The senses below are grouped under the stem BDB assigns to each. This entry also uses Peal (the basic Aramaic stem, parallel to Qal), Peil (the passive Aramaic stem), and Haphel (the causative Aramaic stem, parallel to Hiphil).
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 3 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.
Peal
- . reveal secrets
Pᵉ‛îl
- revealed
Haphel
- . take into exile
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
Derived from גלה (gâlâh) (H1540) — to uncover.
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.
גִּלָּה
- (גלל, cmp. גַּל 3) a valve, folding. Y. Sabb. XII, beg. 13ᶜ מטה של ג׳ folding couch.—Pl. גִּלִּין. Bab. Sabb. 138ᵃ כסא ג׳ camp chair.
גֻּלָּה
- , v. גּוּלָּה
גָּלָה
- , v. גלי
גלי
- (b. h.)
- 1. to be uncovered. Tosef. Mikv. III, 1 a pit שגָּלַת ed. Zuck. which was left open.—Part. pass. גָּלוּי open, revealed. Sabb. 55ᵃ ג׳ וידוע וכ׳ it is open and known to me. Ber. 60ᵇ; a. fr. V. גָּלוּי.
- 2. (of a place) to become bare of inhabitants (v. Jud. XVIII, 30; Jer. I, 3); (of the inhabitants) to leave home, go into exile. Y. Taan. I, 64ᵃ top בכ"מ שגָּלוּ … גָּלַת וכ׳ whithersoever Israel went as exiles, the Divine Majesty went with them (ref. to נגלה, I Sam. II, 27); Meg. 29ᵃ; a. e.—Pesik. Haḥod. p. 48ᵃ אם ג׳ אחד מכם … כאילו גְּלִיתֶם כולכם if one of you is banished (by the Roman Government) to &c.: … as though ye all had been banished; Pesik. R. s. 15; Cant. R. to II, 8. Arakh. 12ᵃ; Meg. 11ᵇ גָּלוּ בשבע they were transported to Babylonia in the seventh year (after the subjection of Jojakim). Macc. II, 1 אלו הן הַגּוֹלִין the following (involuntary homicides) have to leave for the city of refuge. Ib. אינו גוֹלֶה is not bound to flee to &c. Ib. 3 האב גולה ע"י הבן a father is banished for killing his son; a. fr. e.g. Judges 18:30
- to banish, carry into captivity. Macc. 12ᵇ היו … מַגְלִין וכ׳ the Israelites executed the law of banishment in the desert. Num. R. s. 23, end. Ruth R. to I, 1 ומַגְלָם מארצם and is the cause of their exile &c.; a. fr.—Koh. R. to XII, 6 (play on גלת ib.) ‘the golden bowl’ is the gullet, שהיא מַגְלָה את הזהב ומריצה וכ׳ (not שהיה; Lev. R. s. 18 שמכלה, corr. acc.) which banishes the gold and makes the silver run, i.e. which impoverishes the glutton.
- to be discovered, exposed to view; to reveal one’s self, appear. Tanḥ. Sh’moth 19 נ׳ עליו בקולו וכ׳ He revealed Himself to Moses with the voice of Amram &c.; Ex. R. s. 3. Ex. R. s. 2, end בכ"מ שהשכינה נִגְלֵית wherever the Divine Glory appears. Snh. II, 1, v. כָּסָה II; a. fr.
- to uncover, remove; to discover, reveal, publish. Ex. R. s. 15, beg. גִּלּוּ הצדיקים וכ׳ the righteous uncovered their heads. Sot. V, 2; Gen. R. s. 21 מי יְגַלֶּה עפר וכ׳ Oh that one would remove the dust from over thy eyes, i.e. Oh, that thou wouldst resurrect!; Y. Ber. IX, 13ᵈ bot.—Sabb. 88ᵃ מי גי׳ וכ׳ who revealed this secret to my children? Meg. 3ᵃ; a. fr.—ג׳ משפחות to expose to suspicion the legitimacy of families. Tosef. Naz. I, 3; Kidd. 71ᵃ.—ג׳ פנים בתורה (שלא כהלכה) a) to interpret the Law in opposition to the adopted sense, tomisinterpret, pervert. Ab. III, 11; a. e. b) to put the Law to shame by treating its teachers irreverently. Snh. 99ᵃ; a. e.—ג׳ פנים (in gen.) to expose, put to shame. Pirké d’R. El. ch. XLIV, v. לָבַן II.—Part. pass. מְגוּלֶּה, f. מְגוּלָּה uncovered. Par. XI, 1; Ḥull. 9ᵇ; a. fr. Pl. מְגוּלִּין. Ib.; a. fr.
- to be revealed; to be exposed. Pirké d’R. El. ch. XXIII ונתגל בתוך האהל his nakedness was exposed &c. Yoma 9ᵇ נתג׳ עונם their sins were public (they did not hide them); נתג׳ קיצם the end of their captivity was revealed (through prophecy). Naz. 23ᵇ נ׳ קלונו his disgrace is published.—Pes. 119ᵃ; a. fr.—Tanḥ. Mishp. 6; Yalk. Prov. 956, v. גָּלַע.
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 9 distinct written forms H1541 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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H1541, 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 8 — not the complete family. 3 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 8 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 8 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.
