To be high actively, to rise or raise (in various applications, literally or figuratively)
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רוּם is one of the most spatially and theologically vivid verbs in the Hebrew Bible. Its basic meaning is to be high, to rise, to be elevated — and it generates a rich cluster of applications: physical height (mountains are high), social elevation (a person is lifted up in honor), cultic offering (contributions are lifted up as a wave-offering), and above all, divine exaltation.
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Full entry for רוּם (H7311) · Open the biblical lexicon
רוּם is one of the most spatially and theologically vivid verbs in the Hebrew Bible. Its basic meaning is to be high, to rise, to be elevated — and it generates a rich cluster of applications: physical height (mountains are high), social elevation (a person is lifted up in honor), cultic offering (contributions are lifted up as a wave-offering), and above.
The BSB source-word alignment has 190 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include be exalted (7), is exalted (6), . . . (4), contributed (4), high (4).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 7:17. Its strongest book concentrations include Psalms (49), Isaiah (25), Ezekiel (17), Numbers (17).
רוּם is one of the most spatially and theologically vivid verbs in the Hebrew Bible. Its basic meaning is to be high, to rise, to be elevated — and it generates a rich cluster of applications: physical height (mountains are high), social elevation (a person is lifted up in honor), cultic offering (contributions are lifted up as a wave-offering), and above all, divine exaltation.
God is the one who is high (rām, the adjective from the same root), who dwells on high (mārom), and who exalts the lowly while bringing down the proud. The theological use of rûm centers on the great reversal: Hannah's song in 1 Samuel 2 and Mary's Magnificat both articulate the same structure — God brings down the proud, exalts the humble, fills the hungry, sends away the rich.
This reversal pattern is not incidental; it is a recurring OT description of how God orders society. The Psalms return to it repeatedly: 'though the Lord is high (rûm), he looks upon the lowly, but the proud he knows from afar' (Ps 138:6). Divine exaltation and divine opposition to human pride are two faces of the same theological reality. The Hiphil stem (to cause to be high, to exalt) is used for both human and divine lifting up: God exalts the poor from the dust (1 Sam 2:8; Ps 113:7), Israel is called to exalt the Lord (Ps 34:3; 99:5,9), and the suffering servant is 'lifted up and exalted' (Isa 52:13).
This last use is crucial: the servant's rûm comes through humiliation, not around it — the exaltation follows and vindicates the suffering.
רוּם is currently counted by the local OT index at about 193 uses in the OT across its Qal (to be high/exalted), Polel (to exalt/raise up), Hiphil (to lift up/exalt), and Hithpolel (to exalt oneself/be proud) stems. Key theological concentrations include the reversal narratives (Hannah's song, the Psalms of the lowly), the divine-dwelling texts ('he who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity'), the suffering servant's exaltation, and the wisdom literature's treatment of pride.
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted; and the train of His robe filled the temple.
The theophanic use of rûm: the Lord's throne is high and exalted, filling the temple. Isaiah's vision of divine exaltation is the precondition of his prophetic call — he sees who God is (high, holy, the seraphim covering their faces) before he is commissioned to speak for God. The visual grammar of divine rûm establishes the standard against which all human pride is measured and found wanting.
The Lord sends poverty and wealth; He humbles and He exalts.
Hannah's song gives the definitive OT statement of divine rûm as reversal theology. God brings down and lifts up — and the pattern that follows makes clear that the lifting is for the humble while the bringing down is for the proud. The song is theologically programmatic for the whole Samuel narrative (Saul's pride vs. David's humility) and for the NT's Magnificat, which reproduces the same structure.
He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the dump
The Hallel Psalm's description of divine rûm as the lifting of the poor: the God who is 'enthroned on high' (v.5) is also the God who 'stoops down to look' (v.6) and lifts the poor from the dust. Divine exaltation and the lifting of the lowly are not in tension but connected — the God who is high has the power and the will to raise others. This Psalm lies directly behind the Magnificat.
Behold, My Servant will prosper; He will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.
The servant song's opening promise: the servant will be rûm — exalted, lifted up, very high. The remarkable reversal of Isaiah 53 follows: the servant who was 'despised and rejected, a man of sorrows' (53:3), who was 'cut off from the land of the living' (53:8), is the same one who will be exalted. The grammar is sequential: the exaltation vindicates the suffering. This servant-rûm is the OT background of the NT's Christ-exaltation language (Phil 2:9: 'God highly exalted him').
Magnify the Lord with me; let us exalt His name together.
The cultic use of rûm as worship: to exalt the Lord's name together. This is rûm directed upward — the community participating in the liturgical 'raising' of God's honor through praise. The communal form ('let us exalt together') indicates that the reversal theology of rûm is not merely observed but enacted in the worshipping community's own practice of magnifying the God who is already high.
The wise will inherit honor, but fools are held up to shame.
Proverbs' wisdom reading of rûm: honor (from the same semantic field as exaltation) comes to the wise, shame to fools. The reversal pattern operates in wisdom as well as in prophetic and cultic texts — the ordering of society that God intended is one where wisdom is honored and folly is shamed. This connects the ethical dimension of rûm (how the community orders itself) to the theological (how God orders the world).
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How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. Ranges from physical elevation to exaltation; when applied to God, emphasizes absolute supremacy; of humans, often carries pride connotations.
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 1 selected witness from 193 lexical occurrence verses.
רוּם 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.
The rûm theology of the OT is a sustained meditation on two questions: where is God, and what does he do from there? The answer the OT gives is both spatially clear (he is high, enthroned on high, dwelling in the height) and theologically startling (the one who is high looks down to raise the low). Hannah's song, Psalm 113, and Mary's Magnificat all articulate the same divine habit: God overturns proud and lowly expectations according to His covenant purposes, and the pattern characteristically moves in this direction — up for the humble, down for the proud.
This is not a socialist theology or a prosperity theology; it is a covenantal theology. The reversal pattern describes who God is, not a general law of social dynamics. The Isaiah 52:13 servant-rûm is a theological key to the pattern: the servant who suffers humiliation and death is the one who will be exalted. This is not despite the suffering but through it.
Paul's quotation of Isaiah 52-53 in Philippians 2:5-11 ('he humbled himself... therefore God exalted him') is the NT's reading of the rûm theology: the Incarnate One who takes the form of a servant, who becomes obedient to death, is the one God exalts to the name above every name. The preacher who works with rûm has one of the OT's most consistent and pastorally powerful structures: the theology of the God who is high enough to raise the low.
Isa.52.13
The rûm root produces several theologically important nouns: rōm/rāmâh (height, exaltation), mārom (height, the height where God dwells), and the divine epithet ʿelyôn (Most High, from ʿālâh to go up — a different root but semantically adjacent). The adjective rām (high) appears in the divine epithet 'high and lifted up' (rām wĕniśśāʾ, Isa 6:1; 57:15). The Hithpolel stem — to exalt oneself, to be proud — is regularly negative in the OT: human self-exaltation is always the prelude to divine humbling (cf.
Isa 2:12; Dan 5:20-23). The word the OT uses for legitimate praise of God (the Hiphil: to cause to be high, to exalt) is distinct from self-exaltation — the former is worship, the latter is a root expression of sin.
The NT receives the rûm theology primarily through the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55), which reproduces Hannah's reversal pattern almost verbatim, and through the exaltation of Christ. The decisive NT use is Philippians 2:5-11, where the self-emptying of Christ in the Incarnation and cross is followed by God's hyper-exaltation (hyperypsoō, 'highly exalted' — a word Paul seems to coin for the occasion): the name above every name is given as the reward and vindication of the servant's humiliation.
John's Gospel uses ὑψόω (to lift up) with deliberate double meaning: 'when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself' (John 12:32) — the lifting up of the cross is simultaneously the lifting up of exaltation. The theology is the Isa 52:13 rûm pattern: the exaltation follows and passes through the humiliation, it does not bypass it.
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