עָלַץ
to exult
‘to exult’ 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
- Qal
- The basic, simple active stem — the plain form of the verb (“he wrote”).
Form
- Cohortative
- A first-person volitional form expressing wish or resolve (“let me / let us write”).
- Imperfect
- An incomplete, ongoing, or future action (“he will / would write”).
- Infinitive Construct
- A bound verbal noun, frequently with prepositions (“to write / in writing”).
- Jussive
- A third- or second-person volitional form expressing wish or command (“let him write”).
- Perfect
- A completed action or state — Hebrew marks aspect (completeness) more than strict tense (“he wrote”).
Person
- 1st Person
- The speaker (“I / we”).
- 3rd Person
- The one spoken about (“he / she / it / they”).
Gender
- Common
- Either gender — not distinguished for this form.
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
- Feminine
- Grammatically feminine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
- Plural
- More than one (in Hebrew, generally three or more).
Every verse where H5970 appears in the Book of 1 Samuel — 1 distinct verse. 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.
1 Samuel
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.
“to exult” is the headline sense of the Hebrew verb עלץ (ʻâlats). It clusters heavily in Psalms, which alone accounts for 50% of its uses. It turns up in 8 verses across 4 books, an uncommon footprint. Its earliest occurrence is 1 Samuel 2:1. Its meaning spans more than one sense — see its full sense range. See the sense tree, 8-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H5970 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.
- 4 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 4 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #2,625
- by frequency
- Top 5000 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 2,625 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 8 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 8 distinct verses.
- Writings (Ketuvim) 7 verses · 88%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 1 verse · 13%
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: Rejoice 2×, Rejoiceth 2×
- American Standard Version: Be joyful in thee 1×, Exult 1×, Exulteth 1×
- Berean Standard Bible: Exult 2×, Rejoice 2×, Rejoices 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Exult 4×, Let 2×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H5970 across 8 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 4 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 H5970 across 9 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H5970 across 8 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 2 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 H5970 across 13 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 7 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 1 sense 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
- Pf. 3 ms. ע׳ לִבִּ׳ בְּי׳ 1 S 2:1 my heart exulteth in י׳; Impf. 3 ms. יַעֲלֹץ הַשָּׂדֶה 1 Ch 16:32 the field exulteth; cf. 3 fs. תַּעֲלֹץ קִרְיָה Pr 11:10 (‖ רנן); 1 s. אֶעֶלְצָה בָּ֑ךְ ψ 9:3 (i.e. in י׳; + שׂמה, ‖ זמּר); 3 mpl. יַעְלְצוּ בְךָ ψ 5:12 (in י׳; ‖ שׂמח, רנן); יַעַלְצוּ לִפְנֵי אֱלֹהִים 68:4 (+ שׂמח, ‖ שׂישׂ); + לִי 25:2 exult at me; Inf. cstr. בַּעֲלֹץ Pr 28:12 when the righteous exult. e.g. 1 Samuel 2:1
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
vb. rejoice, exult (NH id. (rare); Hiph. Impf. יעליצו Ecclus 4:20; Assyrian elêṣu, exult; Sab. מעלץ joys CIS iv, No. 197, 1. 5. 7; v. also עלז, עלס);—
— 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.
עָלַץ
- (b. h.) to rejoice. Erub. 53ᵇ
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 8 distinct written forms H5970 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| בַּ/עֲלֹ֣ץ | Verb, Qal, Infinitive Construct | Proverbs 28:12 | 1 |
| וְ/אֶעֶלְצָ֣ה | Verb, Qal, Cohortative, 1st Person, Common, Singular | Psalms 9:2 | 1 |
| וְֽ/יַעְלְצ֥וּ | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Psalms 5:11 | 1 |
| יַֽ֭עַלְצוּ | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Psalms 68:3 | 1 |
| יַֽעַלְצ֖וּ | Verb, Qal, Jussive, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural | Psalms 25:2 | 1 |
| יַעֲלֹ֥ץ | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | 1 Chronicles 16:32 | 1 |
| עָלַ֤ץ | Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular | 1 Samuel 2:1 | 1 |
| תַּעֲלֹ֣ץ | Verb, Qal, Imperfect, 3rd Person, Feminine, Singular | Proverbs 11:10 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H5970, 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
Compare all same-root words → 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.
