Hebrew word · H8408

תַּגְמוּל

tagmulohi

benefit

The noun occurs only here (a hapax legomenon, a word found once in the Bible). It comes from the root g-m-l, whose meanings include 'to deal out fully to someone, to do (good or ill) to someone', 'to repay', 'to wean' (finishing a child's nursing) and 'to ripen' (fruit coming to completion).

Appears once in the Hebrew Old Testament. ·

What it means

benefit, act of grace

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 Psalm 116:12

Range of meaning

The noun occurs only here (a hapax legomenon, a word found once in the Bible). It comes from the root g-m-l, whose meanings include 'to deal out fully to someone, to do (good or ill) to someone', 'to repay', 'to wean' (finishing a child's nursing) and 'to ripen' (fruit coming to completion). The related noun gemul means 'a deed done to someone, what they have coming'. It can be good (Ps 103:2, 'forget not all his benefits') or bad (Ps 94:2, 'the deserts of the proud'). Tagmûl is the positive sense: 'bounty, benefit, kind dealing' (BDB, HALOT).

Against the English

KJV/WEB/ESV 'benefits', BSB/NIV 'goodness', NLT 'all he has done for me'. 'Goodness' can sound like a quality of God's character. The Hebrew points to concrete acts, things God has done to and for the speaker.

How it drifted

In modern English 'benefits' leans toward perks, entitlements or employee packages, things you receive passively and may even expect. The Hebrew word names deliberate acts of dealing done by a giver, here God's intervention to rescue someone from death.

Used elsewhere in the period

Psalm 103:2 (kol-gəmûlāyw, 'all his benefits') is the closest parallel in wording and mood. Later Hebrew and Aramaic use tagmûl / tagmûlā for 'recompense, reward'. The Aramaic-style suffix -ôhî is noted in Hebrew grammars (Gesenius–Kautzsch–Cowley §91l) as a late form.

Where it appears

Psalms · 1

  1. Psalm 116:12 תַּגְמוּל֥וֹהִי benefits his

    How can I repay the LORD for all His goodness to me?

    Here: 'His dealings / bounties': the things God has actively done for the speaker, chiefly rescuing him from death (vv. 3, 8). This noun occurs only here in the Hebrew Bible. Its ending (-ôhî, 'his') is Aramaic-style, a mark of later Hebrew. It comes from the root g-m-l, 'to deal out fully, to repay'. The usual idiom is 'to return someone's gemul', meaning to pay back what they have done. That makes a wordplay with 'shall I give back'.

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