gil גִּיל
rejoice; exult
Begin by reading Psalm 13:5-6 and Habakkuk 3:17-19. Watch lament turn to joy before deliverance arrives.
The Heart of This Word Gil is loud joy. It is not quiet contentment but gladness that shows: shouting, singing, a body that cannot sit still. The word appears about forty-five times, scattered through the Psalms, Isaiah, and the Minor Prophets, and it is at home in worship.
What makes gil worth studying is not the volume but the question the word forces on us every time it appears: glad about what? Gil almost never stands alone. It reaches for an object, and the object decides whether the joy is worship or folly.
Linguistic Nuances
⛏️ Explore the Hebrew Treasures in the Library to see how גִּיל (gil, "to rejoice") sits within the vocabulary of praise.
**Binyanim Primer**: The verb occurs in the **Qal** (simple active) and means to rejoice, to exult, to shout for gladness. The related noun גִּילָה (gilah) means exultation. Some lexicons connect the root to circling or spinning, which would suit a joy expressed with the whole body, though the sense of the verb in use is simply to rejoice greatly.
**The Grammar of the Object**: The most useful observation about gil is a matter of syntax rather than stem. It is regularly followed by a preposition naming what the joy rests on: "I will rejoice **in the LORD**" (Hab 3:18), "we will be glad **in his salvation**" (Isa 25:9), "rejoice **in the God of my salvation**" (Isa 61:10). Hebrew keeps asking us to name the ground.
**Joy Aimed Badly**: The same verb describes joy pointed at the wrong thing. The wicked "rejoice to do evil" (Prov 2:14). Samaria's people mourn over a calf they once exulted in (Hos 10:5). The conqueror in Habakkuk rejoices in his own net, the tackle by which he hauls in nations (Hab 1:15). And Israel is warned, "Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth" (Prov 24:17). Gil is not a holy word on its own. It becomes holy when it lands on the holy God.
**Forms in Use**: Many occurrences are imperfect or cohortative, "I will rejoice," "let us be glad," which fits the settings where they appear: resolve voiced in worship, and summons issued to a congregation. The form does not prove a doctrine of joy. It simply helps us read verses like Ps 13:5-6 and Hab 3:18 rightly, where a man is not reporting a mood but declaring what he intends to do with his heart, and telling us why.
Gil is often paired with שִׂמְחָה (simchah, gladness) and רָנַן (ranan, to shout for joy). Together they form the shouting vocabulary of Israel's worship.
Through Scripture's Story
**Because the LORD Reigns**: "The LORD reigneth; let the earth rejoice" (Ps 97:1). The first and largest reason for gil in the Hebrew Bible is not an improvement in the worshipper's circumstances but the kingship of God over all the earth (1 Chr 16:31; Ps 96:11).
**Because He Saves**: "Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us... we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation" (Isa 25:9). Joy here is the answer to a rescue that God performs, not a mood the waiting produced. Isaiah's own testimony runs the same way: "I will greatly rejoice in the LORD... for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation" (Isa 61:10). The clothing is given. The rejoicing follows.
**Because the Wilderness Will Bloom**: "The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose" (Isa 35:1-2). Gil belongs to the promised restoration of creation itself, not merely to the private happiness of individuals.
**When the Answer Has Not Come**: In Ps 13 the psalmist asks "How long?" four times and receives no reported answer, then turns: "But I have trusted in thy mercy; my heart shall rejoice in thy salvation" (Ps 13:5). Nothing in the psalm says the trouble ended. What he names is not a technique for feeling better but a covenant word, chesed, and a saving God. Habakkuk does the same with empty fields and empty stalls: "yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation" (Hab 3:17-18).
**Because God Himself Rejoices**: The most startling use of the word has God as its subject. "The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing" (Zeph 3:17). "I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in my people" (Isa 65:19). Israel's gladness is an echo. God's gladness is the original.
**Because the King Is Coming**: "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion... behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass" (Zech 9:9). Prophetic gil looks forward to a Person.
For the Reader
There is a kind of cheerfulness we manufacture, and everyone knows how thin it is. The Bible's answer to manufactured joy is not stronger effort at feeling but a truer object. Israel was never told to work up gladness. Israel was told that the LORD reigns, that He saves, that He is coming, and then told to rejoice.
That is why gil can live in the same breath as lament. Psalm 13 does not stop being a complaint when it turns to joy. The psalmist is not pretending the darkness is light. He is saying that the darkness is not the deepest thing about his situation, because the LORD who keeps covenant is.
How This Points to Christ
Zechariah's summons to rejoice was fulfilled by a King who rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and went from there to a cross (Zech 9:9; Matt 21:5). The joy Christians are called to is not first our achievement but His: He endured the cross "for the joy that was set before him" (Heb 12:2), and that joy was the redemption of a people.
Notice the order the New Testament keeps. First the announcement, "good tidings of great joy... for unto you is born this day a Saviour" (Luke 2:10-11). Then the rejoicing. Then, after the resurrection, a joy that no one can confiscate: "your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you" (John 16:22). Peter writes to Christians who have never seen Him and says they rejoice "with joy unspeakable and full of glory" (1 Pet 1:8), and he grounds it in a living hope secured by the resurrection.
And Zephaniah's astonishing line is not left behind. The Father runs to meet the returning son and calls for music (Luke 15:22-24). The joy of God over sinners He has saved is the fountain; ours is the stream.
For Your Soul
You may not be able to summon a feeling tonight. You are not asked to. Look instead at what is already true and does not depend on your mood: Christ died for sinners, God raised Him, and everyone who trusts Him is forgiven and kept.
Our age is skilled at supplying substitutes for joy: a scroll that never ends, another purchase, another distraction. They are not evil because they are pleasures. They are thin, and thin things cannot hold the weight of a soul. The gifts of God in ordinary life, bread and friendship and music and sleep, are genuinely good and worth thanking Him for. They simply were never meant to be the ground you stand on.
So do what the psalmists did. Say out loud what God has done, in Christ, for you. Joy will not always arrive on schedule, and Scripture nowhere promises that the sorrow will lift tonight. But the ground of gil is not your circumstances and not your temperament. "The LORD reigneth; let the earth rejoice" (Ps 97:1). He reigns whether or not you feel it, and He rejoices over His people with singing (Zeph 3:17; Ps 13:5-6; Isa 25:9; Isa 61:10; Hab 3:17-18; Luke 2:10-11; John 16:22; Heb 12:2; 1 Pet 1:8).
Open this reading in the interactive app, with tappable Scripture references and audio.