to join in someone else's joy: to be glad about their good news along with them
The word takes the ordinary Greek verb for being glad, χαίρω, and puts "with" in front of it. That small addition decides whose joy is in view. The joy belongs to somebody else, and the person doing the verb is coming into it from outside. A shepherd who has found his lost sheep does not ask the neighbors to cheer up in general; he asks them to be glad about his sheep (Luke 15:6).
Inside that one idea the New Testament uses stretch across a short range:
- feeling another person's good news as though it had happened to you, the way every part of a body shares an honor given to one part (1 Corinthians 12:26)
- going to the person and saying out loud that you are glad for them, which is what English calls congratulating (Luke 1:58)
- handing joy back and forth between two parties who are each giving something up for the other (Philippians 2:17 and 2:18)
One use steps outside that pattern. In 1 Corinthians 13:6 the partner in the joy is not a person at all: love "does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth." Some read the "with" there as simple strengthening, so that love takes great delight in the truth. Others hear the truth pictured as a companion whose victories love is glad to celebrate.
The word is warm without being sentimental. Every time it appears something has actually happened: a sheep is back, a lost coin is found, a childless woman has a son, a young church is holding firm while the man who founded it expects to die.
Nuances
Whether the verb in Luke 1:58, and possibly in Philippians 2:17 and 2:18, names the social act of offering congratulations rather than joy actually shared.
- contestedEveryday Greek letters and documents of the period use this verb as a set formula for congratulating someone, so in Luke 1:58 the neighbors and relatives come to congratulate Elizabeth.; BDAG, s.v. συγχαίρω; James Hope Moulton and George Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, s.v. συγχαίρω
- contestedThe associative force of the prefix is retained throughout the New Testament, so the neighbors and relatives share Elizabeth's joy, and any congratulation is implied by that shared joy rather than replacing it.; Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, χαίρω κτλ. (Hans Conzelmann)