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עלה

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Etymology and origin of the Biblical Hebrew word עלה

עלה1 to go up

Confidence
Established
Formation
Inherited
First attested
600–500 BC Lachish ostracon 4
Inherited from
Proto-Semitic *ʕaly-
Ultimate origin
Proto-Semitic *ʕaly-

Pronunciation

  • Tiberian: ʿālâ[1][2]
  • Samaritan reading tradition: imperfect yāl, plural yāllu[3]

Forms

עָלָה (ʿālâ) verb[1] Qal perfect עָלָה, imperfect יַעֲלֶה, short וַיַּעַל, imperative עֲלֵה, infinitive עֲלוֹת, participle עֹלֶה.[4][5] HALOT counts 612 qal forms, 18 niphal and 255 hiphil, with a few hophal and one doubtful hithpael (Jeremiah 51:3).[4] HALOT also records a short imperative על in the Arad inscriptions.[4]

Etymology

The verb “to go up” is inherited from Proto-Semitic *ʕaly- (“high”), the root of words for height in most Semitic languages.[6][7] It is kept in Ugaritic ʿly (“to go up, rise”), whose causative stem also means “to offer”,[8] in Phoenician ʿlh,[5][9] in Akkadian elû (“to go up”),[10][4] and in Arabic عَلَا (ʿalā, “to be high, rise”) and عَلِيَ (ʿaliya).[11][6] Old South Arabian ʿly means “to be excellent” and, in its causative, “to lead up higher”.[4] In Aramaic the verb was largely replaced by Aramaic סלק (slq), and Syriac uses the root only in derived stems, as “to raise”.[4][5] HALOT also compares Egyptian iʿr (“to climb up”), and Wiktionary carries the root back to Proto-Afroasiatic *ʕal-.[4][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The oldest dated record of the verb is a letter from Lachish, one of the ostraca that Sáenz-Badillos dates to the 6th century BC.[12] Its writer reports of a man that Shemaiah wyʿlhw hʿyrh, “brought him up to the city”, with the hiphil.[13] In the Bible the verb occurs 889 times, seven of them in the archaic poems.[1][14] In the Blessing of Jacob, Reuben is told kî ʿālîṯā miškəḇê ʾāḇîḵā, “for you went up onto your father's bed” (Genesis 49:4), a use HALOT classes as sexual, and Judah has “gone up from the prey” like a lion (49:9).[4][1] In the archaic poem of 1 Samuel 2 God môrîḏ šəʾôl wayyāʿal, “brings down to Sheol and brings up” (1 Samuel 2:6).[4][1]

Semantic evolution

The qal is used of anything that rises: people and animals climbing, plants growing, smoke, dust, the dawn, and the noise of a city.[4] Going “up” to the land of Israel became a fixed use: from Egypt to Canaan, with the stations of the route, from Babylon in the return of the exiles in Ezra and Nehemiah, and on pilgrimage to the sanctuary.[4] An army “goes up” against a city, and a border “goes up” in the lists of Joshua.[4] The hiphil “bring up” has God as subject in the formula of the Exodus, “who brought you up out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 3:17), and is the usual verb for offering a sacrifice on the altar, heʿĕlâ ʿōlôṯ (Genesis 8:20); Ugaritic uses its causative stem in the same way.[4][8] The niphal is rarer: the cloud “lifts” from the tabernacle (Exodus 40:36), and God “is exalted” (Psalm 47:10).[4]

The Septuagint renders the qal by Ancient Greek ἀναβαίνω (anabaínō) and the hiphil mostly by ἀναφέρω (anaphérō) and ἀνάγω (anágō).[1] The Dead Sea Scrolls use it 514 times.[15] From the noun ʿălîyâ “ascent”, formed on this verb, comes the English word aliyah.[7] Modern Hebrew עלה (alá) keeps the verb.[6]

Timeline

  • 6th century BC – wyʿlhw hʿyrh “and he brought him up to the city” in a Lachish ostracon.[13][12]
  • Archaic Hebrew poetry – kî ʿālîṯā “for you went up” in the Blessing of Jacob (Genesis 49:4).[14][1]
  • Classical Biblical Hebrew – more than half of the 889 occurrences are in Genesis to Kings.[1]
  • Late Biblical Hebrew – the verb of the return from Babylon in Ezra and Nehemiah.[4]
  • 3rd–2nd century BC – the Septuagint renders it by Ancient Greek ἀναβαίνω (anabaínō).[16][1]
  • 2nd century BC – 2nd century AD – 514 occurrences in the Dead Sea Scrolls.[17][15]

Meanings

Verb

  1. qal: to ascend, go up, climb; of smoke, dust or the dawn, to rise.[4][5]
  2. qal: to go up to the land of Israel, to the sanctuary or to a city;[4] (military) to advance against.[4]
  3. qal: of plants, to grow, shoot up; of a lot, to come out.[4]
  4. niphal: to be lifted, to withdraw; of God, to be exalted.[4]
  5. hiphil: to bring up, lead up (out of Egypt, out of a pit or the underworld).[4]
  6. hiphil (cultic): to offer a sacrifice on the altar.[4][5]
  7. hiphil: to cause to rise (smoke, clouds); to set up lamps; to overlay.[4]

Word family

  • מַעֲלֶה (maʿălāh)
  • עֲלִיָּה (ʿălîyāh)
  • עֶלְיוֹן (ʿelyôn)
  • תְּעָלָה (təʿālāh)

Descendants

  • Modern Hebrew עלה (alá)[6]

עלה2 burnt offering

Confidence
Established
Formation
Derivation
First attested
Hebrew Bible
Ultimate origin
Proto-Semitic *ʕaly-

Pronunciation

  • Tiberian: ʿōlâ[1]
  • Samaritan reading tradition: ʿāla, construct ʿā̊låt[3][18]

Forms

עֹלָה (ʿōlāh) noun, masculine, plural עֹלוֹת[1][6] Construct עֹלַת, with suffix עֹלָתוֹ, plural עֹלוֹת; also spelled plene עוֹלָה about 34 times.[19][20]

Etymology

The burnt offering is from Biblical Hebrew עָלָה (ʿālâ, “to go up”), the verb used for offering it on the altar.[20] Gesenius–Buhl takes it as the feminine participle, “that which goes up”, while HALOT follows Koehler in reading it as short for a phrase “tribute rising (in the fire)”.[21][20] BDB explains the name as the offering that goes up to heaven, others as the one that goes up on the altar.[19] The same noun is found in Egyptian Aramaic עלוה (ʿlwh), in Classical Syriac ܥܠܬܐ (ʿalāṯā) and in Neo-Punic ʿlt, and Albright read it in a Proto-Sinaitic inscription.[20][21]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word is a term of the cult in every part of the Bible: 287 times, 179 of them in Genesis to Kings, none in the archaic poems.[1] The first in the canon is Noah's sacrifice after the flood, wayyaʿal ʿōlōṯ bammizbēaḥ, “and he offered burnt offerings on the altar” (Genesis 8:20).[1][20]

Semantic evolution

HALOT defines the ʿōlâ as a sacrifice burnt whole, of cattle, sheep and goats and sometimes birds.[20] BDB describes the rite: the whole animal except the hide went up in the flame of the altar.[19] The Priestly laws give it a daily form, ʿōlaṯ tāmîḏ, “the continual burnt offering” (Exodus 29:42), a morning offering, and an offering for each Sabbath (Numbers 28:10); it has its own altar, mizbaḥ hāʿōlâ (Exodus 30:28).[20]

The Septuagint coined a set of words for it from “whole” and “burn”: Ancient Greek ὁλοκαύτωμα (holokaútōma) and ὁλοκαύτωσις (holokaútōsis), with ὁλοκάρπωσις (holokárpōsis) in some books.[1][22][21] In the Dead Sea Scrolls it occurs 210 times, 60 of them in 11Q19.[15] Modern Hebrew עֹלָה (óla) keeps the word.[6]

Timeline

  • Classical Biblical Hebrew – 179 of the 287 occurrences, most of them in the Priestly laws of Leviticus and Numbers.[1][20]
  • Late Biblical Hebrew – 42 occurrences, among them the daily offerings restored in Ezra 3:4.[1][20]
  • 3rd–2nd century BC – the Septuagint renders it by Ancient Greek ὁλοκαύτωμα (holokaútōma).[16][1]
  • 2nd century BC – 2nd century AD – 210 occurrences in the Dead Sea Scrolls.[17][15]

Meanings

Noun

  1. (cultic) a burnt offering, a holocaust: a sacrifice burnt whole on the altar.[20][19]
  2. ʿōlaṯ tāmîḏ, the daily burnt offering of the sanctuary.[20]

Descendants

  • Modern Hebrew עֹלָה (óla)[6]

עלה3 leaf

Confidence
Probable
Formation
Derivation
First attested
Hebrew Bible
Ultimate origin
Proto-Semitic *ʕaly-

Pronunciation

  • Tiberian: ʿāleh[1]
  • Samaritan reading tradition: ʿāli[3][18]

Forms

עָלֶה (ʿāleh) noun, masculine, plural עֹלוֹת[1][6] Construct עֲלֵה and עֲלֵי, with suffix עָלֵהוּ; collective, “foliage”.[23][24]

Etymology

The leaf is from Biblical Hebrew עָלָה (ʿālâ, “to go up”), a noun of the same root in the sense of what shoots up.[23][25] HALOT follows Brongers in giving its first sense as “outgrowth, sprout”, and BDB files it under the qal sense of growing.[23][24] Gesenius–Buhl and Klein compare Akkadian alû or elû, “shoot”.[26][25] Jewish Aramaic has עַלְיָא (ʿalyā), and Mehri a word for a blade of grass.[23]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first leaves in the canon are the fig leaves of Genesis 3:7, wayyiṯpərû ʿălēh ṯəʾēnâ, “and they sewed fig leaves together”.[1][24] The word occurs 18 times, never in the archaic poems.[1]

Semantic evolution

BDB groups the biblical leaves into the fresh and the fallen: the olive leaf the dove brings back to Noah (Genesis 8:11) and the green leaf of the tree by the water (Jeremiah 17:8, Psalm 1:3) stand against the fading leaf of Isaiah 1:30 and 34:4 and the leaf driven by the wind (Leviticus 26:36, Job 13:25).[24][23] In Ezekiel's vision the trees by the river bear leaves “for healing” (Ezekiel 47:12).[24] In Nehemiah 8:15 the people fetch the leafy branches of olive, myrtle and palm for the booths.[23][1] The Septuagint renders it by Ancient Greek φύλλον (phúllon).[1][27] Rabbinic Hebrew plays on the fig leaves of Genesis 3:7,[28] and Modern Hebrew עלה (alé) also means the leaf of a book.[6][25]

Timeline

  • Classical Biblical Hebrew – the fig leaves of Genesis 3:7 and the olive leaf of Genesis 8:11.[1][24]
  • 3rd–2nd century BC – the Septuagint renders it by Ancient Greek φύλλον (phúllon).[16][1]
  • 2nd century BC – 2nd century AD – 28 occurrences in the Dead Sea Scrolls.[17][15]

Meanings

Noun

  1. a leaf; collectively, foliage.[23][24]
  2. (figurative) a withered or wind-driven leaf, as an image of frailty.[24]

Descendants

  • Modern Hebrew עלה (alé)[6]

Usage notes

The Biblical Aramaic noun עִלָּה (ʿillâ), “pretext, ground for complaint” (Daniel 6:5–6), is written with the same letters but Klein derives it from the root עלל.[29][1] BDB lists a second noun עֹלָה, “ascent, stairway”, only in the written text of Ezekiel 40:26, and prefers to read מַעֲלָתוֹ there.[30]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z Clear Bible (2023–), MACULA Hebrew Linguistic Datasets (Westminster Leningrad Codex, with Greek alignment), github.com/Clear-Bible/macula-hebrew, CC BY 4.0
  2. ^ Brown, Francis; Driver, S. R.; Briggs, Charles A. (1906), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, with an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  3. ^ a b c Højgaard, Christian Canu; Naaijer, Martijn; Schorch, Stefan (2023), Text-Fabric Dataset of the Samaritan Pentateuch, Zenodo, doi:10.5281/zenodo.7734632
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Koehler, Ludwig; Baumgartner, Walter; Stamm, Johann Jakob (1994–2000), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, transl. and ed. M. E. J. Richardson, 5 vols, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. עלה
  5. ^ a b c d e Brown, Francis; Driver, S. R.; Briggs, Charles A. (1906), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, with an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. עָלָה
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  7. ^ a b Huehnergard, John (2011), "Proto-Semitic Language and Culture" and "Semitic Roots", in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, p. s.v. ʿly
  8. ^ a b del Olmo Lete, Gregorio; Sanmartín, Joaquín (2015), A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language in the Alphabetic Tradition, 3rd ed., transl. W. G. E. Watson, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. ʕ-l-y
  9. ^ Klein, Ernest (1987), A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English, Jerusalem: Carta; Haifa: University of Haifa, p. s.v. עלה
  10. ^ Tawil, Hayim ben Yosef (2009), An Akkadian Lexical Companion for Biblical Hebrew: Etymological-Semantic and Idiomatic Equivalents, Jersey City: Ktav, p. 277
  11. ^ Lane, Edward William (1863–1893), An Arabic-English Lexicon, 8 parts, London: Williams and Norgate, p. 2143
  12. ^ a b Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 76–77
  13. ^ a b Davies, Graham I. (1991), Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Concordance, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 1.004
  14. ^ a b Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 69
  15. ^ a b c d e Abegg, Martin G.; Jacobs, Jarod; Roorda, Dirk (2022), The Dead Sea Scrolls, Text-Fabric dataset, version 2.0.2, github.com/ETCBC/dss
  16. ^ a b c Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 93
  17. ^ a b c Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993), A History of the Hebrew Language, transl. John Elwolde, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 143
  18. ^ a b Koehler, Ludwig; Baumgartner, Walter; Stamm, Johann Jakob (1994–2000), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, transl. and ed. M. E. J. Richardson, 5 vols, Leiden: Brill
  19. ^ a b c d Brown, Francis; Driver, S. R.; Briggs, Charles A. (1906), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, with an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. עֹלָה
  20. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Koehler, Ludwig; Baumgartner, Walter; Stamm, Johann Jakob (1994–2000), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, transl. and ed. M. E. J. Richardson, 5 vols, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. עֹלָה
  21. ^ a b c Gesenius, Wilhelm; Buhl, Frants (1915), Hebräisches und aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament, 17th ed., Leipzig: F. C. W. Vogel, p. s.v. עֹלָה
  22. ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. ὁλοκαύτωμα
  23. ^ a b c d e f g Koehler, Ludwig; Baumgartner, Walter; Stamm, Johann Jakob (1994–2000), The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, transl. and ed. M. E. J. Richardson, 5 vols, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. עָלֶה
  24. ^ a b c d e f g h Brown, Francis; Driver, S. R.; Briggs, Charles A. (1906), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, with an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. עָלֶה
  25. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest (1987), A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English, Jerusalem: Carta; Haifa: University of Haifa, p. s.v. עָלֶה
  26. ^ Gesenius, Wilhelm; Buhl, Frants (1915), Hebräisches und aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament, 17th ed., Leipzig: F. C. W. Vogel, p. s.v. עָלֶה
  27. ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. φύλλον
  28. ^ Jastrow, Marcus (1886–1903), A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature, London: Luzac; New York: Putnam, p. s.v. עָלֶה
  29. ^ Klein, Ernest (1987), A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English, Jerusalem: Carta; Haifa: University of Haifa, p. s.v. עִלָּה
  30. ^ Brown, Francis; Driver, S. R.; Briggs, Charles A. (1906), A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, with an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. עֹלָה²

Derived terms

Related etymologies

  • אבן · also from Proto-Semitic
  • כשר · also from Proto-Semitic
  • גן · also from Proto-Semitic
  • גוי · also from Proto-Semitic
  • יובל · also from Proto-Semitic
  • גמל · also from Proto-Semitic
  • שק · also from Proto-Semitic
  • אתון · also from Proto-Semitic
Cite this entry

“עלה.” Etymologically, 1 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/hbo/%D7%A2%D7%9C%D7%94. Accessed 1 Nov. 2026.

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