Hebrew Roots · letter 3 of 22
A hunter's throwstick, and the letter of the redeemer who buys his own back.
How sure we are of this ancient picture
LikelyOriginal sign
A throwstick, the hunter's curved throwing stick.
Paleo-Hebrew
Two strokes meeting at a corner, the long arm shortened.
Modern square
The letter as every printed Hebrew Bible sets it.
On the picture: Leading epigraphic reading is a throwstick; "camel" is the popular gloss and is likely a later folk etymology.
Stage 1 has no Unicode encoding, so it stays a drawing, simplified from the copies published by the scholars who studied the inscriptions themselves: Gardiner, Cross, Naveh, Hamilton. Ancient scribes varied, and no two carvings cut a letter exactly alike. Stages 2 and 3 are real Unicode text.
Sounds like
A hard g as in "gate" — never the soft g of "gem."
Written g in scholarly books.
Its number
3
letters carried number values from the Hellenistic era on
Its name means
throwstick
Final form
none
this letter does not change at the end of a word
Gimel is the third letter, and the story most people have heard about it is wrong. It is usually said to be a camel, because the Hebrew word for camel, gamal, sounds like the letter's name. But the oldest form of the sign looks like a curved throwing stick, and that is what the sign's original name most likely meant. The camel came later, from people guessing at the name, a good reminder of how easily a plausible story replaces the evidence.
The letter carries one of the Bible's great words: goel, the kinsman-redeemer. A goel was the near relative whose job it was to buy back what his family had lost: land, freedom, even a widow's future. Boaz is one. Job reaches for the word from the ash-heap. Israel's God takes the title for himself.
As always: the throwstick is where the shape came from, not a secret hiding inside every word that starts with gimel. Goel does not mean "redeemer" because of a stick. It means redeemer because that is what the word meant to the people who used it.
Verses 17 through 24 are gimel's block, and the first word of verse 17 is gemol: "deal bountifully with thy servant." It is the same root family as the word for repaying or dealing out to someone, and it starts the stanza that contains one of the psalm's most quoted lines: "Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law."
Goel is a family word before it is a theological one. When a man lost his land or his liberty, the nearest relative with the means to act had the right, and the duty, to buy it back. Boaz does exactly that for Ruth and Naomi. Job, sitting in ruin, says he knows his goel lives. Isaiah puts the title on God himself, over and over. The word is doing real legal work every time; that is what makes it land so hard when God claims it.
“Then the women said to Naomi, “Blessed be the LORD, who has not left you this day without a kinsman-redeemer. May his name become famous in Israel.”
Ruth 4:14 — Boaz the redeemer→
“But I know that my Redeemer lives, and in the end He will stand upon the earth.”
Job 19:25 — "I know that my Redeemer liveth"→
“Thus says the LORD, the King and Redeemer of Israel, the LORD of Hosts: “I am the first and I am the last, and there is no God but Me.”
Isaiah 44:6 — "the King and Redeemer of Israel, the LORD of Hosts"→
In every one of the Bible's alphabet poems, gimel takes the third step. In Psalm 34 that step is "O magnify the LORD with me" — gadlu, a gimel word meaning to make great. In Proverbs 31 it is the line about the worthy woman doing her husband good and not evil all the days of her life.
“Surely none who wait for You will be put to shame; but those who are faithless without cause will be disgraced.”
Psalm 25:3→
“Magnify the LORD with me; let us exalt His name together.”
Psalm 34:3 — "Magnify the LORD with me"→
“Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised; His greatness is unsearchable.”
Psalm 145:3→
“She brings him good and not harm all the days of her life.”
Proverbs 31:12→
“Judah has gone into exile under affliction and harsh slavery; she dwells among the nations but finds no place to rest. All her pursuers have overtaken her in the midst of her distress.”
Lamentations 1:3→
גֹּאֵל
goel — kinsman-redeemer
The relative who buys back what the family lost: Boaz for Ruth, and God for Israel.
The Kinsman-Redeemer→
גָּמָל
gamal — camel
The word that gave the letter its popular nickname, by sound, not by history.
Open the word→
גַּן
gan — garden
The enclosed garden of Genesis 2: a planted place with a boundary around it.
Open the word→
גָּדוֹל
gadol — great
"Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised" — the psalms' standard word for size and weight.
Open the word→
Psalm 119 is the alphabet walking down the longest chapter in the Bible. Every letter gets eight verses, and every one of those eight verses begins with it. Verses 17–24 are the Gimel stanza — eight lines that all open on ג. Every line stands open below, with one preacher’s comment on it directly underneath.
“Deal bountifully with Your servant, that I may live and keep Your word.”
Psalm 119:17→
“And what wonder is it the Spirit works life, who enlivens as does the Father and as does the Son? And who can deny that giving new life is the work of the eternal Majesty? For it is written, "Give life to your servant." He, then, is enlivened who is a servant, that is, a person, who before he did not have life but received the privilege of having it.Let us then see whether the Spirit is enlivened, or himself giving life. Now it is written, "The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life." So, then, the Spirit enlivens.”
Ambrose of MilanOn the Holy Spirit 2.4.29-31 (397)on Psalm 119:17→
“Open my eyes that I may see wondrous things from Your law.”
Psalm 119:18→
“Hear me, therefore, my fellow servant, my friend, my brother; give ear for a moment that I may tell you how you are to walk in the holy Scriptures. All that we read in the divine books, while glistening and shining without, is yet far sweeter within. "He who desires to eat the kernel must first break the nut." "Open my eyes," says David, "that I may behold wondrous things out of your law."”
JeromeLETTER 58.9 (420)on Psalm 119:18→
“I am a stranger on the earth; do not hide Your commandments from me.”
Psalm 119:19→
“I am a stranger in the earth - A wayfaring man; a pilgrim; a so-journer; a man whose permanent home is not in this world. The word is applicable to one who belongs to another country, and who is now merely passing through a foreign land, or sojourning there for a time. Compare the notes at Heb 11:13. The home of the child of God is heaven. Here he is in a strange - a foreign - land. He is to abide here but for a little time, and then to pass on to his eternal habitation. Hide not thy commandments from me - Make me to know them; keep them continually before me. In this strange land, away from my home, let me have the comfort of feeling that thy commands are ever with me to guide me; thy promises to comfort me. The feeling is that of one in a strange land who would desire, if possible, to keep up constant communications with his home - his family, his friends, his kindred there. On earth, the place of our sojourning - of our pilgrimage - the friend of God desires to have constant contact with heaven, his final home; not to be left to the desolate feeling that he is cut off from all contact with that world where he is forever to dwell.”
Albert BarnesNotes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869)on Psalm 119:19→
“My soul is consumed with longing for Your judgments at all times.”
Psalm 119:20→
“ONE of the best tests of a man's character will be found in his deepest and heartiest longings. You cannot always judge a man by what he is doing at any one time, for he may be under constraints which compel him to act contrary to his true self, or he may be under an impulse from which he will soon be free. He may, for a while, back off from that which is evil and yet he may be radically bad.”
Charles SpurgeonThe Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 1586: “Holy Longings” (lightly modernized text, CCEL edition) (1881)on Psalm 119:20→
“You rebuke the arrogant— the cursed who stray from Your commandments.”
Psalm 119:21→
“Transgressors of the commandments merit eternal punishments. The Psalm: "Cursed are they who decline from Thy commandments": cursed, because it shall be said to them: "Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire."”
BonaventureCollationes de Decem Praeceptis, Collation 1 (1257)on Psalm 119:21→
“Remove my scorn and contempt, for I have kept Your testimonies.”
Psalm 119:22→
“"O turn from me shame and rebuke; for I have sought out Thy testimonies" (ver. 22). Testimonies are called in Greek μαρτύρια, which word we now use for the Latin word: whence those who on account of their testimony to Christ have been brought low by various sufferings, and have contended unto death for the truth, are not called testes, but by the Greek term Martyrs. Since then ye hear in this term one more familiar and grateful, let us take these words as if it were said, "O turn from me shame and rebuke; because I have sought out Thy martyrdoms." When the body of Christ speaketh thus, doth it consider it any punishment to hear rebuke and shame from the ungodly and the proud, since it rather reacheth the crown by this means? Why then doth it pray that it should be removed from it as something heavy and insupportable, save because, as I said, it prayeth for its very enemies, to whom it seeth it is destructive, to cast the holy name of Christ as a reproach to Christians. ...For my enemies, whom Thou enjoinest to be loved by me, who more and more die and are lost, when they despise Thy martyrdoms and accuse them in me, will indeed be recalled to life and be found, if they reverence Thy martyrdoms in me. Thus it hath happened: this we see. Behold, martyrdom in the name of Christ, both with men and in this world, is not only not a disgrace, but a great ornament: behold, not only in the sight of the Lord, but in the sight of men, "precious is the death of His Saints;" behold, His martyrs are not only not despised, but honoured with great distinctions. ...”
Augustine of HippoExposition on Psalm 119 (430)on Psalm 119:22→
“Though rulers sit and slander me, Your servant meditates on Your statutes.”
Psalm 119:23→
“Princes also did sit and speak against me,.... The princes in the court of Saul, who suggested to him that David sought his hurt; the princes of his own court, Absalom, his own son, a prince of the blood, and Ahithophel, a counsellor of state: or the princes of the Gentiles, as Jarchi; so the princes of the Philistines spake against him in a very disdainful manner, "make this fellow return to his place again", 1Sa 29:”
John GillExposition of the Old Testament (1748-1763)on Psalm 119:23→
“Your testimonies are indeed my delight; they are my counselors.”
Psalm 119:24→
“'For your testimonies are my meditation, and your justifications are my counsel'; which counsel is found in the testaments and testimonies. In designation of this it is said in Exodus that when Moses was to enter the oracle, he entered through the midst of the …”
BonaventureCollationes de Septem Donis, Collation 7 (1257)on Psalm 119:24→
“, GIMEL.--The Third Part. GIMEL. Deal bountifully with thy servant,.... Which character is mentioned, not by way of plea or argument for favour, but as expressive of modesty, sense of duty, and obligation to it. He pleads not his services by way of merit; but prays that God would deal bountifully with him, in a way of grace and mercy: or "render good" unto him, as the Targum; bestow it on him as a free gift.”
John GillExposition of the Old Testament (1748-1763)on Psalm 119:17→
“Open thou mine eyes,.... The eyes of my heart or understanding, as Kimchi; or, "reveal mine eyes" (t); take off the veil from them: there is a veil of darkness and ignorance on the hearts of all men, with respect to divine and spiritual things; their understandings are darkened, yea, darkness itself.”
John GillExposition of the Old Testament (1748-1763)on Psalm 119:18→
“Thou hast rebuked the proud,.... Which some understand of the fallen angels, who, in proud wrath, left their habitations, because they would not be subject to the Son of God in human nature; wherefore he scattered them in the imaginations of their hearts, and cast down these mighty ones into hell, where they are reserved in chains of darkness to the judgment of the great day.”
John GillExposition of the Old Testament (1748-1763)on Psalm 119:21→
The Talmud preserves a schoolroom game in which each letter's name is heard as a phrase. Gimel and dalet, read together, become gomel dalim: "showing kindness to the poor" — and the tradition adds that gimel's leg is stretched out toward dalet because the giver runs after the one in need. That is a piece of ancient Jewish teaching about the letters, and a lovely one. It is not an explanation of what gimel-words mean, and the Talmud is not offering it as one.
Read this way by: Rabbinic tradition, b. Shabbat 104a (Rodkinson English translation, 1903 — public domain)
