In modern Hebrew and Yiddishgoy is the standard term for a gentile. In biblical Hebrewgoy is the standard term for a nation. The wordnation has been the common translation of the Hebrew goy or Greek ethnos in the Septuagint, from the earliest English language bibles such as the 1611 King James Version and the 1530 Tyndale Bible, following the Latin Vulgate which used both gentile and nationes. The term nation did not have the same political connotations it entails today. The word "gentile" is a synonym for the Hebrew word nokri or nokhri which signifies "stranger" or "non-Jew". Long before Roman times it had also acquired the meaning of someone who is not Jewish. It is also used to refer to individuals from non-Jewish religious or ethnic groups. The term goy is not inherently any more or less offensive than the term gentile, unlike the term Sheigetz. As the Jews considered all of the non-Jewish nations in biblical times as polytheistic and idolatrous, goy acquired the meaning "heathen". In a more comprehensive definition, the word goy corresponds to the term ummot ha-olam.
The word goy means "nation" in Biblical Hebrew. In the Torah, goy and its variants appear over 550 times in reference to Israelites and to gentile nations. The first recorded usage of goyim occurs in and applies innocuously to non-Israelite nations. The first mention of goy in relation to the Israelites comes in, when God promisesAbraham that his descendants will form a goy gadol. In, the Israelites are referred to as a goy kadosh, a "holy nation". While the books of the Hebrew Bible often use goy to describe the Israelites, the later Jewish writings tend to apply the term to other nations. Some Bible translations leave the word goyim untranslated and treat it as the proper name of a country. In, it states that the "King of Goyim" was Tidal. Bible commentaries suggest that the term may refer to Gutium. In all other cases in the Bible, goyim is the plural of goy and means "nations". One of the more poetic descriptions of the chosen people in the Hebrew Bible, and popular among Jewish scholars, as the highest description of themselves: when God proclaims in the holy writ, goy ehad b'aretz, or "a unique nation upon the earth!". Because of the idolatry and immoralities of the surrounding nations, the biblical writings show a passionate intolerance of these nations. Thus the seven goyim, i.e., nations, were to be treated with but little mercy; and, more especially, marriages with them were not to be tolerated. Nonetheless, the focus of the 70 sacrifices brought on the Succot holiday was for good and welfare of the seventy nations of the world.
The rabbinic literature conceives of the nations of the world as numbering seventy, each with a distinct language and purpose. Chaim ibn Attar maintains that this is the symbolism behind the Menorah: Maimonides defines plain goy in his Mishneh Torah as a worshipper of idolatry, as he explains, "Whenever we say plainly 'goy', we mean a worshipper of idolatry".
