To render (or esteem) glorious (in a wide application)
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δοξάζω is the verb of glorification — to give or ascribe δόξα (glory) to someone, to honor them, to magnify their reputation and being. The word derives from δόξα, which in classical Greek meant 'opinion' or 'reputation' but in the LXX and NT carries the full weight of the Hebrew כָּבוֹד (glory, weightiness, the visible manifestation of divine honor and presence).
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Full entry for δοξάζω (G1392) · Open the biblical lexicon
δοξάζω is the verb of glorification — to give or ascribe δόξα (glory) to someone, to honor them, to magnify their reputation and being. The word derives from δόξα, which in classical Greek meant 'opinion' or 'reputation' but in the LXX and NT carries the full weight of the Hebrew כָּבוֹד (glory, weightiness, the visible manifestation of divine honor and.
The BSB source-word alignment has 61 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include glorify (8), they glorified (5), glorified (4), glorifying (3), is glorified (3).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 5:16. Its strongest book concentrations include John (23), Luke (9), Acts (5), Romans (5).
This entry includes 1 verse guide that explain exact original-language forms in context.
δοξάζω is the verb of glorification — to give or ascribe δόξα (glory) to someone, to honor them, to magnify their reputation and being. The word derives from δόξα, which in classical Greek meant 'opinion' or 'reputation' but in the LXX and NT carries the full weight of the Hebrew כָּבוֹד (glory, weightiness, the visible manifestation of divine honor and presence).
δοξάζω therefore means not merely 'to praise' or 'to think well of' but to recognize and declare the actual weight of what is being honored — to name glory where glory is present, to give visible expression to the divine radiance that is already there. The verb appears 61 times in the NT and operates at three distinct levels that John's Gospel holds in a uniquely concentrated way.
First, the human level: Jesus's healings cause people to δοξάζω God (Matt 9:8, Luke 13:13) — they recognize in what Jesus has done the weight of God's presence and give it its appropriate naming. Second, the divine level: the Father δοξάζω-s the Son and the Son δοξάζω-s the Father (John 17:1-5) — the mutual glorification within the Trinity is the eternal form of which human praise is the temporal echo.
Third — and this is the Johannine stroke of genius — the moment of Jesus's greatest humiliation is the moment of his deepest glorification. 'The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified' (John 12:23) introduces the passion prediction about the grain of wheat that falls into the ground and dies. The cross is the moment of glorification. John's theology of the cross is not despite the suffering but through it and as it: the lifting up on the cross is the lifting up in glory (John 3:14, 8:28, 12:32-34).
The preacher who holds δοξάζω in John has a word that refuses the separation between the crucifixion and the exaltation — they are not sequential stages but the same event read at different depths.
δοξάζω appears about 61 times in the local NT index across four main uses: (1) the human response to Jesus's miracles (glorifying God for what they have seen); (2) the Johannine passion theology where the cross is the glorification of the Son; (3) the eschatological glorification of believers through union with Christ (Rom 8:30); (4) the doxological summons to glorify God in conduct (1 Cor 6:20). The Johannine use is the most theologically distinctive: the hour of the passion is consistently named as the hour of glory.
But Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.
The hinge verse of John's glorification theology. The Greeks seeking Jesus trigger the declaration: 'the hour has come.' In John, 'the hour' refers consistently to the passion — the cross, death, and resurrection. The hour of glorification is not the resurrection (though the resurrection is included) but the entire complex of events beginning with the passion.
What follows immediately is the grain-of-wheat saying (12:24) — unless the grain falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. The δοξάζω of the Son of Man is not despite this dying but through it. The grain's dying is its fruitfulness; the Son's passion is his glory.
When Jesus had spoken these things, He lifted up His eyes to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son may glorify You.
The High Priestly Prayer opens with the mutual glorification of Father and Son. The request 'glorify your Son' is made at the beginning of the passion — the Supper is over, Judas has left, and Jesus is moving toward Gethsemane. The glory asked for is the glory of the cross and resurrection. The purpose clause 'that your Son may also glorify you' shows the Trinitarian dynamic: the Father's glorification of the Son is the condition for the Son's glorification of the Father.
The cross is not the interruption of glory but its supreme expression — the Son's obedience to death is the deepest manifestation of the Father's love and the Son's own divine character.
And those He predestined, He also called; those He called, He also justified; those He justified, He also glorified.
Paul's golden chain of salvation uses δοξάζω as the final link — and in the aorist tense, as if it has already happened. 'Whom he justified, those he also glorified' — the glorification of believers is stated as a completed past action because it is as certain as anything God has determined to do. The aorist of δοξάζω here is the NT's most concentrated statement that believers' glorification is not a distant hope but a present reality in God's purpose, so certain that it can be spoken of in the past tense.
The chain from predestination to glorification is unbroken — no link falls out.
You were bought at a price. Therefore glorify God with your body.
The ethical summons to δοξάζω uses the purchasing language of redemption as its basis: 'you were bought with a price.' The body is not an irrelevant shell to be escaped but the instrument of God's glory — which is why sexual immorality (the subject of 6:18-20) is not merely a personal failing but a failure to δοξάζω God with the body that belongs to him. This use grounds the doxological summons in the incarnation's affirmation of bodily existence and in the passion's declaration of the body's worth: the price paid was the body of Christ; the body that remains is now the site of God's glorification.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Verse-level guides showing how this original-language form works in its specific context, including grammar, verse function, and guarded interpretation.
Greek word. To glorify by ascribing honor and splendor; reflects the Hebrew sense of making weighty or significant.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 of 62 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
I glorify, honor, bestow glory on
Read verseI glorify, honor, bestow glory on
Read verseI glorify, honor, bestow glory on
Read verseI glorify, honor, bestow glory on
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Read verseI glorify, honor, bestow glory on
Read verseI glorify, honor, bestow glory on
Read verseI glorify, honor, bestow glory on
Read verseI glorify, honor, bestow glory on
Read verseI glorify, honor, bestow glory on
Read verseI glorify, honor, bestow glory on
Read verseI glorify, honor, bestow glory on
Read verseI glorify, honor, bestow glory on
Read verseI glorify, honor, bestow glory on
Read verseI glorify, honor, bestow glory on
Read verseI glorify, honor, bestow glory on
Read verseFull New Testament corpus: 260 chapters, 7,957 verses, 140,628 tokens. Data source: honza/textus-receptus (data only), with authority check against byztxt/greektext-textus-receptus.
How mood, tense, and voice shift the force of this verb in context.
This verb appears through different tense, voice, mood, or stem patterns. Those forms help readers see how the action is presented in context.
How this verb appears across 59 occurrences in the NT discourse index (MACULA Greek SBLGNT).
Aspect reflects grammatical form — not authorial emphasis. Participles and infinitives are verbal adjectives and nouns respectively.
Clause data: MACULA Greek (Clear Bible, CC BY 4.0) · SBLGNT (Logos/SBL, CC BY 4.0)
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 7 selected witnesses from 61 lexical occurrence verses.
δοξάζω is built from this root:
Assures believers of certain future transformation. Acts 21:15-26
Understanding comes after glorification through cross and resurrection. Romans 8:28-30
Spirit's work centers on magnifying Christ.
Even martyrdom glorifies God.
Affirms that the ultimate focus remains God’s work.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
δοξάζω in John does something no other NT writer does as consistently: it makes the cross the hour of glory. Not the hour before glory, not the price of glory, but the hour of glory itself. John 12:23 announces it: 'the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.' John 12:24 explains it: the grain of wheat must fall into the earth and die. John 13:31 declares it at the moment Judas leaves: 'Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in him.'
The departure of the betrayer triggers the glorification announcement because the passion has begun. The preacher who holds this word in John must resist the temptation to separate the passion from the glorification, as if the cross is the dark section before the bright section. In Johannine theology, they are one event. The cross is the lifting up — both onto the instrument of death and into the presence of the Father.
The resurrection does not reverse the cross; it reveals what the cross already was. This is the word that gives Paul's 'I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified' (1 Cor 2:2) its full theological weight: the crucified Christ is already the glorified Christ, and the cross is already the throne. The preacher who understands δοξάζω can preach the passion as the event it is — not a problem to be solved by the resurrection but the glory that the resurrection discloses.
John.12.23
δοξάζω derives from δόξα (glory, honor, reputation). In classical Greek, δόξα meant 'opinion' or 'reputation' — what people think of you. The LXX transforms the word by using it for כָּבוֹד (weight, glory, visible manifestation of divine presence), and the NT inherits this transformed meaning: δόξα is not merely reputation but the actual weight of God's being made visible.
δοξάζω therefore means to give something its appropriate recognition as the reality it is — to name the glory that is present, to honor the weight that is there. The verb can have human beings as subject (people glorify God for a miracle) or God as subject (the Father glorifies the Son) or believers as object (Rom 8:30). The aorist passive use in Romans 8:30 ('those he glorified') is a proleptic or prophetic aorist — the certainty of the future event stated as past fact, a construction possible because God's purposes are as good as accomplished.
The OT foundation of NT δοξάζω runs through three streams. First, the כָּבוֹד tradition: the visible weight of God's presence filling the tabernacle and temple (Exod 40:34, 1 Kgs 8:11), the cloud of glory on Sinai, the Shekinah that Israel could see and point to. δόξα in the NT is the continuation of this visible-presence tradition. Second, the Isaiah servant songs: Isaiah 52:13 announces that the servant 'shall be high and lifted up (ὑψωθήσεται) and shall be exalted greatly.'
John's pairing of ὑψόω (to lift up) with δοξάζω is the application of this servant-text to Jesus — the lifting up on the cross is the lifting up of the exalted servant. Third, the Psalms' doxological tradition: the Psalms repeatedly call Israel to δοξάζω God for his deeds in history (Ps 22:23 — 'praise him, all you seed of Israel'; Ps 86:12 — 'I will glorify your name forever').
The NT's ethical use of δοξάζω (glorify God in your body, 1 Cor 6:20; glorify God in the day of visitation, 1 Pet 2:12) continues this Psalm doxology in the key of the new covenant.
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