Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
kavod
Glory. From a root meaning heavy. Weight before brightness.
Psalm 19:1, in every translation this tool compares.
His word carries weight. English already uses heaviness for importance and nobody thinks about scales.
Because glory is the most-used and least-examined word in Christian vocabulary, and the Hebrew root is physical.
Every version reads glory, or honour in some contexts.
כָּבוֹד kavod · H3519
Kavod is from kavad, to be heavy. The same root gives the verb in honour thy father, which is nearer treat as weighty. Kavod is substance, the reason something registers.
English glory came through Latin gloria, about renown and splendour, so the heaviness never made the trip.
Abstract theological nouns almost always come from concrete roots. Find the concrete sense and the abstract one stops floating.
Glory is the majority rendering; honour appears where a person is in view.
- kavad, to be heavy: 1 Samuel 4:18
- kabed in the fifth commandment: Exodus 20:12
- Septuagint doxa for kavod
