גָּלָל
ga.lal
Galal
Lexicon Entry
Lexicon data from STEPBible TIPNR, Tyndale House, Cambridge. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
What Original Readers Understood
Supported# Analysis of Galal (H1559G) Based on the lexicon data provided, galal appears in the Hebrew Bible only once, making it an extremely rare word. With a single occurrence, determining its precise meaning and semantic range is inherently limited. The transliteration "ga.lal" suggests a simple root structure, but the single attestation prevents us from observing how the word might have been used in different contexts or grammatical forms. The rarity of this term raises important questions about its significance. A word appearing only once in the biblical text could represent either a specialized or archaic term that fell out of common usage, or it might be a hapax legomenon—a unique word whose meaning must be inferred from context and linguistic comparison. Without additional lexical data, usage patterns, or comparative ancient Hebrew sources provided in this entry, we cannot reliably establish whether galal carried a narrow, technical meaning or a broader sense that overlapped with other Hebrew vocabulary. For anyone studying biblical Hebrew, galal exemplifies why single-occurrence words require particular care in interpretation. Scholars must rely on contextual clues, etymology, and related languages to propose meaning, making such rare terms both linguistically intriguing and interpretively challenging.
Source data & methodology
Occurrences in Scripture
1 total occurrence across the text