Great (in any sense); hence, older ; also insolent
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Gādôl is the Hebrew adjective for great, large, or mighty, and it is among the most versatile words in the Hebrew Bible. It describes size (a great city), number (a great multitude), status (a great king, a great priest), intensity (great fear, great joy, great evil), age (the elder/greater), and — most theologically — the character of God.
Reader summary
Full entry for גָּדוֹל (H1419) · Open the biblical lexicon
Gādôl is the Hebrew adjective for great, large, or mighty, and it is among the most versatile words in the Hebrew Bible. It describes size (a great city), number (a great multitude), status (a great king, a great priest), intensity (great fear, great joy, great evil), age (the elder/greater), and — most theologically — the character of God.
The BSB source-word alignment has 524 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include great (60), a great (43), the great (37), . . . (20), the high (13).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 1:16. Its strongest book concentrations include Jeremiah (48), Deuteronomy (44), Ezekiel (36), 1 Samuel (35).
Gādôl is the Hebrew adjective for great, large, or mighty, and it is among the most versatile words in the Hebrew Bible. It describes size (a great city), number (a great multitude), status (a great king, a great priest), intensity (great fear, great joy, great evil), age (the elder/greater), and — most theologically — the character of God. 'Great is the Lord' is not a superlative among competing greatnesses.
It is a theological declaration: the Lord exceeds any category of greatness that exists. He is great in power (Ps. 147. 5), great in lovingkindness (Ps. 103. 11), great in mercy, great in faithfulness. The word's theological concentration becomes visible when it modifies divine attributes rather than created objects: the greatness of God is not merely impressive scale but qualitative ultimacy.
The great and terrible Day of the Lord (Joel 2:11), the great name of God (1 Sam. 12:22), the great covenant love — these are not hyperbole. They are the recognition that the God of Israel operates in a category that surpasses all human competition. The phrase ʾēl gādôl (the great God) appears as a confession of faith across the Hebrew Bible, and the Psalms return repeatedly to the declaration that there is none like him, none greater, no comparison available.
The local Hebrew index currently counts about 530 H1419 uses, making it one of the frequent Hebrew adjectives with broad distribution across narrative, legal, poetic, and prophetic texts. Its theological uses cluster around the character of God (great name, great love, great power), the covenant promises (making Abraham a great nation), and the eschatological day (the great Day of the Lord). Its ordinary uses describe size, quantity, status, and seniority.
Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, His holy mountain.
The opening of a Zion psalm: greatness and praise belong to the Lord together. His greatness is not a neutral property to be observed; it calls for active response — praise in the holy mountain. The city itself is oriented around the greatness of the God who dwells there.
I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.
God's promise to Abraham uses gādôl twice: a great nation, a great name. What Babel sought by its own construction (let us make a name for ourselves, Gen.11.4) God gives to Abraham by grace and promise. Human greatness achieved through autonomy is condemned; greatness given by God through covenant is the ground of blessing.
For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, mighty, and awesome God, showing no partiality and accepting no bribe.
Gādôl here is one of three stacked modifiers: great, mighty, awesome. The pattern emphasizes that God's greatness is not merely superlative scale but active, moral, and unapproachable. His greatness is precisely what makes partiality and corruption impossible — the great God cannot be leveraged.
Indeed, for the sake of His great name, the Lord will not abandon His people, because He was pleased to make you His own.
Samuel's speech connects the Lord's great name with his covenant faithfulness. He will not abandon Israel not because of Israel's merit but because his own gādôl name is at stake in the covenant he made. This is a recurring theological logic in the prophets: the Lord acts for the sake of his name when Israel has failed.
The Lord raises His voice in the presence of His army. Indeed, His camp is very large, for mighty are those who obey His command. For the Day of the Lord is great and very dreadful. Who can endure it?
The great Day of the Lord is one of the most theologically weighted uses of gādôl in the prophets. The Day is great because the Lord himself is great and acts finally in history with his full power. The appropriate response is not admiration but trembling. Greatness here is not benign scale but holy judgment.
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.
Hebrew word. great (in any sense); hence, older ; also insolent
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
גָּדוֹל is built from this root:
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Gādôl is the biblical vocabulary of scale that refuses to stay at the human level. Every great thing in the Hebrew Bible — a great city, a great king, a great name, a great nation — is eventually measured against the Lord, who surpasses all of it and renders it relative. The theological function of gādôl is to establish proportion. When the Psalms declare 'Great is the Lord,' they are not saying the Lord is the greatest of the great (superlative in a competition).
They are saying the Lord is great in a category of his own. He does not compete with Pharaoh for the title of great. He is the one against whom all claimed greatness is measured and found smaller. This matters pastorally because the culture has no shortage of things that present themselves as great — great powers, great leaders, great ideas, great achievements.
The biblical response is not to minimize genuine human achievement but to locate it correctly: all created greatness is derivative, contingent, and passing. Only the Lord's greatness is original, sovereign, and permanent. The great name that Abraham was given by grace, not by construction, is still the model: real greatness is given by God, received in covenant, and exercised in service.
Jesus' reversal of his disciples' argument about who is greatest (Mark 9:34-35) is gādôl theology applied: the great in the kingdom is the servant, the slave. Greatness is redefined by the one who is himself the great God — and who chose the servant's path.
Ps.48.1
Gādôl is an adjective from the root gādal (to be great, to grow, to make great — H1431). The abstract noun gĕdûllāh (greatness) and the verb form appear in liturgical contexts: 'Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory' (1 Chr.29.11). In comparative constructions, gādôl can mean greater or elder (the older child, the senior person). The noun haggādôl (the great one) can refer to a high-ranking person or, in prophetic contexts, to the Day of the Lord as the supremely significant event in history.
The New Testament's megas (great) carries the same theological range as gādôl. The Great Commandment, the great day, the great multitude in Revelation, the great white throne — all of these use Greek megas in contexts where the scale points toward the character and action of God. Jesus' teaching on greatness in the kingdom (Mark 9:34-35, Matt. 18. 1-4, 20. 25-27) directly subverts the cultural default of gādôl as status and power.
In the kingdom, the great is the one who serves. This is not the abolition of greatness but its redefinition in the light of the one who is the great God and who took the servant's path. Revelation's eschatological uses of 'great' cluster around the final events — the great tribulation, the great winepress of God's wrath, the great white throne — where gādôl theology reaches its ultimate form: the greatness of God's justice displayed in history's final accounting.
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