Properly, to spin round (under the influence of any violent emotion), i.e. usually rejoice , or (as cringing ) fear
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H1523, giyl, is a Hebrew verb for deep rejoicing, gladness, or exultation. The word can describe a heart responding to God's salvation, a people welcoming their humble king, creation answering the LORD's rule, or God delighting over His restored people.
Reader summary
Full entry for גִּיל (H1523) · Open the biblical lexicon
H1523, giyl, is a Hebrew verb for deep rejoicing, gladness, or exultation. The word can describe a heart responding to God's salvation, a people welcoming their humble king, creation answering the LORD's rule, or God delighting over His restored people.
The BSB source-word alignment has 45 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include rejoice (15), will rejoice (6), and rejoice (5), . . . (2), I will rejoice (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at 1 Chronicles 16:31. Its strongest book concentrations include Psalms (19), Isaiah (11), Proverbs (5), Habakkuk (2).
This entry includes 1 verse guide that explain exact original-language forms in context.
H1523, giyl, is a Hebrew verb for deep rejoicing, gladness, or exultation. The word can describe a heart responding to God's salvation, a people welcoming their humble king, creation answering the Lord's rule, or God delighting over His restored people. Habakkuk chooses to rejoice in the God of salvation while crops fail and livestock disappear. Psalm 13 anticipates joy after a prayer that begins in abandonment and fear. Isaiah rejoices because God clothes His people with salvation and righteousness. These contexts ground joy in God's character, presence, promise, and saving work rather than in denial of painful conditions.
The same verb can also expose disordered joy. Proverbs describes people who rejoice in twisted evil and warns against rejoicing when an enemy stumbles. Psalm 13 contrasts the enemy's anticipated gloating with the sufferer's trust in God's steadfast love. Emotion is not self-validating; its object and moral direction matter. Biblical joy does not bless cruelty, humiliation, exploitation, revenge, or another person's downfall. Nor is rejoicing a demand that people suppress grief. Habakkuk names devastation before he rejoices, and the psalms often carry lament into trust without erasing what hurts. Pastoral care should never treat cheerfulness as proof of faith or sadness as disobedience.
H1523 also joins joy to reverence, peace, and restored relationship. Psalm 2 tells rulers to rejoice with trembling before the Lord's anointed king. Zechariah summons Zion to rejoice because her righteous and humble king comes, breaks the bow of war, and proclaims peace to the nations. Zephaniah announces that the Lord is among His people, saves, quiets them with love, and rejoices over them. God's delight is covenantal grace, not permission for spiritual leaders to speak romantically or possessively for God toward vulnerable people. Faithful rejoicing can be bodily and exuberant, quiet and steady, communal or personal. Its truth is measured not by intensity but by whether it answers God's good work and grows into humility, peace, gratitude, mercy, and shared hope.
H1523 traces deep rejoicing through costly trust, reverent worship, salvation, ethical discernment, the arrival of a humble king, and God's gracious delight over a restored people.
Yet I will exult in the Lord; I will rejoice in the God of my salvation!
Habakkuk names agricultural and economic devastation before choosing joy in the God of salvation. Rejoicing is resilient trust, not denial of loss or a guarantee of immediate recovery.
Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling.
Earthly rulers are summoned to wise submission before the Lord and His anointed. Rejoicing and reverence belong together, correcting both terror without refuge and celebration without accountability.
But I have trusted in Your loving devotion; my heart will rejoice in Your salvation.
The promised joy grows inside a lament that asks how long suffering will continue. Trust in steadfast love does not invalidate the petition or force premature emotional resolution.
From those who enjoy doing evil and rejoice in the twistedness of evil,
The verb can name morally corrupt delight. Wisdom evaluates joy by what it loves and the path it reinforces, not by emotional strength alone.
Do not gloat when your enemy falls, and do not let your heart rejoice when he stumbles,
Wisdom forbids delight in an enemy's collapse. The command restrains vindictiveness without requiring people to remain unsafe or abandon truthful accountability.
I will rejoice greatly in the Lord, my soul will exult in my God; for He has clothed me with garments of salvation and wrapped me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom wears a priestly headdress, as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
Joy answers God's gift of salvation and righteousness within a chapter of good news, comfort, release, justice, and restored community.
Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, O Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your King comes to you, righteous and victorious, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
Zion's joy centers on a righteous, saving, humble king whose coming leads into the breaking of war's weapons and peace for the nations.
The Lord your God is among you; He is mighty to save. He will rejoice over you with gladness; He will quiet you with His love; He will rejoice over you with singing.”
After judgment and purification, the Lord's presence brings saving power, quieting love, and divine delight over His gathered people. The promise restores the shamed and fearful.
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.
Hebrew word. Rejoicing as visceral, bodily revolution—spinning from overwhelming emotion, whether exultant joy or cowering fear
Rejoicing as visceral, bodily revolution—spinning from overwhelming emotion, whether exultant joy or cowering fear
properly, to spin round (under the influence of any violent emotion), i.e. usually rejoice, or (as cringing) fear BDB: rejoice Usage: be glad, joy, be joyful, rejoice.
How the stem changes the meaning of this verb across the biblical text.
This verb appears through different tense, voice, mood, or stem patterns. Those forms help readers see how the action is presented in context.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 2 selected witnesses from 46 lexical occurrence verses.
גִּיל is a primitive root - no further derivation.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
H1523 presents joy as a powerful response that must be both grounded and tested. Habakkuk rejoices in the God of salvation after naming economic collapse. Psalm 13 trusts steadfast love while the lament still sounds. Isaiah exults in God's clothing of salvation and righteousness. Zechariah's joy welcomes a humble king who breaks war's bow and speaks peace, and Zephaniah locates restored joy in God's saving presence and delight.
Yet Proverbs uses the same verb for pleasure in evil and forbids gloating when an enemy falls. Biblical intensity does not prove moral goodness. Faithful joy answers God's grace and another's true good; corrupt joy feeds on twistedness, superiority, or harm. Pastoral practice should therefore resist mandatory cheerfulness, prosperity claims, revenge celebrations, and emotional performance.
It should cultivate gratitude that can tell the truth about loss, reverence that receives refuge, celebration that includes the restored, and hope that bears fruit in mercy and peace.
Hab.3.18
H1523 is a Hebrew Qal verb represented by imperfect, cohortative, sequential imperfect, and jussive forms in the governed morphology witness. It commonly conveys rejoicing, exultation, or gladness. Older source wording associates the verb with bodily movement under strong emotion, but the direct passages should control claims about embodied expression. The word does not require spinning, dancing, smiling, loudness, or one emotional intensity in every occurrence.
Context also shows that the verb can take good or evil objects, so lexical force alone cannot declare the rejoicing righteous.
The New Testament announces great joy in the Savior, calls believers to rejoice in the Lord, and presents Jesus as Zion's humble king entering Jerusalem. It also commands empathy with those who rejoice and weep. These continuities keep Christian joy centered in Christ while refusing emotional isolation from suffering neighbors or triumph over enemies.