גָּעַל
to abhor
also: loathe, fall 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”). Here: ‘abhor’
- Niphal
- Usually the simple passive or reflexive of the Qal (“he was written”).
- Hiphil
- The causative active stem (“he caused / brought about”).
Form
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
- Sequential Perfect
- A perfect with prefixed waw continuing a preceding imperfect or command (waw-consecutive perfect).
- Participle Active
- A verbal adjective expressing ongoing or characteristic action (“writing / one who writes”).
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Person
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
Gender
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Grammatical forms
- Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular 2 times (20%)
- Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular 2 times (20%)
- Verb, Qal, Sequential Perfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular 1 time (10%)
- Verb, Niphal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (10%)
- Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular 1 time (10%)
- Verb, Qal, Perfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular 1 time (10%)
- Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural 1 time (10%)
- Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Feminine, Singular, Absolute 1 time (10%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 10 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H1602 appears — 9 distinct verses across 5 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.
Leviticus 5 verses
- Leviticus 26:11 תִגְעַ֥ל Qal impf 3fs I will set my tent among you: and my soul won't abhor you.
- Leviticus 26:15 תִּגְעַ֣ל Qal impf 3fs and if you shall reject my statutes, and if your soul abhors my ordinances, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant;
- Leviticus 26:30 וְ/גָעֲלָ֥ה conj + Qal wpf 3fs I will destroy your high places, and cut down your incense altars, and cast your dead bodies upon the bodies of your idols; and my soul will abhor you.
- Leviticus 26:43 גָּעֲלָ֥ה Qal pf 3fs The land also will be left by them, and will enjoy its sabbaths while it lies desolate without them: and they will accept the punishment of their iniquity; because, even because they rejected my ordinances, and their soul abhorred my statutes.
- Leviticus 26:44 גְעַלְתִּי/ם֙ Qal pf 1cs + sfx pers 3mp Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break my covenant with them; for I am Yahweh their God;
2 Samuel 1 verse
Job 1 verse
Jeremiah 1 verse
Ezekiel 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.
געל (gâʻal) is a Hebrew verb most often rendered “to abhor.” Leviticus dominates its distribution — 5 of 9 verses. Spanning 9 verses in 5 books, it ranks among the uncommon words of the Hebrew Bible. Scripture first uses it in Leviticus 26:11. As a verb its force shifts by stem, across 3 stems (Qal, Niphal, 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 H1602 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 →
- 9
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 9 distinct verses.
- 5 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 5 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,342
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,342 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 9 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 9 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 5 verses · 56%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 3 verses · 33%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 1 verse · 11%
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: Lothed 2×
- American Standard Version: Loathed 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Despise 3×, Despised 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Detested 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H1602 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 H1602 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 H1602 across 10 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 H1602 across 14 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 11 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.
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.
Qal
- abhor, loathe
Niphal
- . the shield of heroes was defiled
Hiphil
- . and doth not curse, or allow, (the cow) to reject as loathsome
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
[ גָּעַל ] vb. abhor, loathe
— 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.
גָּעַל
- to be covered with impurity, be loathsome; to loathe. V. preced.
- to remove impurity by means of hot water, to cleanse. Ab. Zar. V, 12 את שדרכו להַגְעִיל יַגְעִיל a vessel which ordinarily is cleansed with hot water, must be purified for ritual purposes by means of hot water. Ib. 76ᵃ כיצד מַגְעִילָן וכ׳ how must one disinfect them? You put a smaller vessel into a larger one &c.; a. fr.—Y. Ter. XI, 48ᵃ מַגְעִילָהּ בחמין removes the soakings of T’rumah &c. [Y. Maasr. I, end, 49ᵇ שיגעיל, read משיעגל, v. עָגַל.] V. הַגְעָלָה.
- to be removed through boiling. Y. Ter. l. c.
- to be soiled. Zeb. 88ᵃ
גְּעַל
- Ithpa. אִתְגָּעַל, Ithpe. אִתְגְּעַל, אִיגְּעַל to be polluted, soiled. Targ. Is. I, 6.—Part. pass. Af. מַגְעַל. Ib. VI, 5; XXVIII, 8.
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 10 distinct written forms H1602 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| גְעַלְתִּי/ם֙ | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular | Leviticus 26:44 | 1 |
| גָּֽעֲ֨לוּ֙ | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural | Ezekiel 16:45 | 1 |
| גָּעֲלָ֣ה | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Jeremiah 14:19 | 1 |
| גָּעֲלָ֥ה | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Leviticus 26:43 | 1 |
| גֹּעֶ֥לֶת | Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Feminine, Singular, Absolute | Ezekiel 16:45 | 1 |
| וְ/גָעֲלָ֥ה | Verb, Qal, Sequential Perfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Leviticus 26:30 | 1 |
| יַגְעִ֑ל | Verb, Hiphil, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | Job 21:10 | 1 |
| נִגְעַל֙ | Verb, Niphal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | 2 Samuel 1:21 | 1 |
| תִגְעַ֥ל | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Leviticus 26:11 | 1 |
| תִּגְעַ֣ל | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Leviticus 26:15 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H1602, 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 → 1 of the same-root words is a proper name (a person or place). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 9 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 9 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.
