גְּמוּל
recompense
also: dealing, benefit fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
See every Construct-state word in the Hebrew Bible →
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
Noun type
- Common
- A common noun — a general class of person, place, or thing (“king,” “city,” “water”), not a specific name.
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).
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct 10 times (53%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 8 times (42%)
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct 1 time (5%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 19 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H1576 appears — 17 distinct verses across 9 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.
Judges 1 verse
2 Chronicles 1 verse
Psalms 4 verses
- Psalms 28:4 גְּמוּלָ֣/ם n c ms cs + sfx pers 3mp Give them according to their work, and according to the wickedness of their doings. Give them according to the operation of their hands. Bring back on them what they deserve.
- Psalms 94:2 גְּ֝מ֗וּל n c ms Rise up, you judge of the earth. Pay back the proud what they deserve.
- Psalms 103:2 גְּמוּלָֽי/ו n c mp cs + sfx pers 3ms Praise Yahweh, my soul, And don't forget all his benefits;
- Psalms 137:8 גְּ֝מוּלֵ֗/ךְ n c ms cs + sfx pers 2fs Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, He will be happy who rewards you, As you have served us.
Proverbs 2 verses
Isaiah 4 verses
- Isaiah 3:11 גְמ֥וּל n c ms cs Woe to the wicked! Disaster is upon them; For the deeds of his hands will be paid back to him.
- Isaiah 35:4 גְּמ֣וּל n c ms cs Tell those who are of a fearful heart, Be strong, don't be afraid: behold, your God will come [with] vengeance, [with] the recompense of God; he will come and save you.
- Isaiah 59:18 גְּמ֖וּל גְּמ֥וּל n c ms n c ms According to their deeds, accordingly he will repay, wrath to his adversaries, recompense to his enemies; to the islands he will repay recompense.
- Isaiah 66:6 גְּמ֖וּל n c ms A voice of tumult from the city, a voice from the temple, a voice of Yahweh that renders recompense to his enemies.
Jeremiah 1 verse
Lamentations 1 verse
Joel 2 verses
- Joel 3:4 הַ/גְּמ֗וּל גְּמֻלְ/כֶ֖ם ptcl inter + n c ms n c ms cs + sfx pers 2mp "Yes, and what are you to me, Tyre, and Sidon, And all the regions of Philistia? Will you repay me? And if you repay me, I will swiftly and speedily return your repayment on your own head.
- Joel 3:7 גְמֻלְ/כֶ֖ם n c ms cs + sfx pers 2mp Behold, I will stir them up out of the place where you have sold them, And will return your repayment on your own head;
Obadiah 1 verse
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.
At its core, גמול (gᵉmûwl) means “recompense.” Older and newer Bibles part ways — “recompence” in the King James Version, “recompense” (Berean Standard Bible) in modern versions. See the renderings breakdown. It appears 17 verses across 9 books of the Hebrew Bible, among its uncommon vocabulary. Scripture first uses it in Judges 9:16. Beyond its headline sense, its full sense range takes in “dealing” and “benefit”. 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 H1576 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 →
- 17
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 17 distinct verses.
- 9 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 9 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,563
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,563 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 17 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 17 distinct verses.
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 9 verses · 53%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 8 verses · 47%
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: Recompence 10×, Reward 2×
- American Standard Version: Recompense 8×, Desert 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Recompense 5×, They deserve 3×, Retribution 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Recompense 10×, Recompense of 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H1576 across 18 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H1576 across 18 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 H1576 across 18 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. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 1 further occurrence.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H1576 across 18 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
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.
- 1. גְּמוּל יָדַיִם dealing of the hands Ju 9:16 Pr 12:14 (יָשׁוּב לְ) Is 3:11 (יֵעָשֶׂה לְ). e.g. Judges 9:16
- 2. dealing, hence (from context) equivalent of dealing, recompence: c. suff. Ob 15 גמלך ישׁוב בראשׁך, Jo 4:4, 7 (הֵשִׁיב), so with הֵשִׁיב לְ ψ 28:4; שִׁלֵּם לְ 137:8 Pr 19:17; absolutely שִׁלֵּם (הֵשִׁיב) גְּמוּל לְ Is 59:18(×2); 66:6 Je 51:6 La 3:64; עַל Jo 4:4 ψ 94:2; Is 35:4 ג׳ אלהים the recompence of God. e.g. Obadiah 1:15
- 3. benefit: אַל תשׁכחי כל גמוליו ψ 103:2; כגמול עליו according to the benefit (done) unto him 2 Ch 32:25 e.g. Psalms 103:2
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
n.m. dealing, recompence, benefit—ג׳ ψ 94:2 + 11 times; sf. גְּמֻלְךָ Ob 15, etc.; pl. sf. גְּמוּלָיו ψ 103:2;—
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from גמל (gâmal) (H1580) — to recompense.
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.
גְּמוּל
- deed, reward, recompense. Keth. 8ᵇ בעל הג׳ … גְּמוּלְכֶם may He who rewards, pay you for your good deed.—Pl. גְּמוּלִים, גְּמוּלִין. Gen. R. s. 13 ג׳ טובים וכ׳ goodness bestowed on the guilty. Tosef. Shebi. VII, 9 ואין משלמין מהן ג׳ and favors received must not be repaid with them (the fruits of the Sabbath year); ib. Peah IV, 16.—גְּמוּלוֹת. Deut. R. s. 1 ג׳ אני פורע (some ed. גמי׳ incorr.) I repay according to deeds.
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 18 distinct written forms H1576 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.
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H1576, 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
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 7 — 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 16 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 17 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
- Judges 9:16
- 2 Chronicles 32:25
- Psalms 28:4
- Proverbs 12:14
- Isaiah 3:11
- Jeremiah 51:6
- Lamentations 3:64
- Joel 3:4
- Obadiah 1:15
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.
