Hebrew word · H1352

גֹּ֫אֶל

go'olei

defilement

'Defilement' or 'pollution'. The noun appears only here. Its root, גאל II, means 'to be or make ritually defiled or unfit'.

Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

defilement, defiling

Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).

In depth

From the study of Nehemiah 13:29

Range of meaning

'Defilement' or 'pollution'. The noun appears only here. Its root, גאל II, means 'to be or make ritually defiled or unfit'. That root is found mainly in late biblical Hebrew: priests 'treated as defiled and excluded from the priesthood' (Ezra 2:62 = Neh 7:64), 'defiled food' on the altar (Mal 1:7, 12), hands 'defiled with blood' (Isa 59:3; Lam 4:14), 'defiled' Jerusalem (Zeph 3:1).

Against the English

'Defiled' (KJV, BSB, WEB, NASB) and 'desecrated' (ESV) are accurate. YLT's 'the redeemed of the priesthood' mixes up this root with the identical-sounding גאל I, 'to redeem / act as kinsman-redeemer' (as in Ruth). That yields a reading the context cannot support.

How it drifted

There is no drift in standard English versions. The confusion is ancient: the two Hebrew roots look alike, and the Greek Septuagint already translated this root family with words for kinship.

Used elsewhere in the period

BDB lists גֹּאֶל as a hapax (a word used only once) meaning 'defiling'. HALOT treats גאל II as a separate root and possibly a later variant of געל ('to loathe'). The closest parallel is Ezra 2:62 / Neh 7:64. There, priests who could not prove their descent were 'defiled away from the priesthood', that is, disqualified from serving.

Where it appears

Nehemiah · 1

  1. Nehemiah 13:29 גָּאֳלֵ֣י [the] defilement<s> of

    Remember them, O my God, because they have defiled the priesthood and the covenant of the priesthood and of the Levites.

    Here: A plural noun found only here in the Bible: 'defilings' or 'pollutions of'. It comes from a root meaning 'to make ritually unfit'. That root sounds the same as the root for 'redeem' but is a different word. The plural may point to repeated or several acts of defilement.

Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.