to keep a pilgrimage festival; to celebrate an appointed sacred feast
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
This verb does not mean celebrating in general. It means observing one of Israel's set religious festivals, the kind a worshiper traveled to a sanctuary to keep. The related noun is the festival itself (חַג), the feast that this word describes people keeping.
Most often it names the three annual pilgrimage feasts, above all the Feast of Booths (Tabernacles) and the Passover season. To keep such a feast was not a quiet observance: it involved going up to the holy place, joyful processions, and dancing before the LORD. That physical, festive movement is built into the word, which is why the same verb can shade toward reeling and whirling in one place (see the second meaning below).
Just once the word steps outside the sacred setting: when David's men find the Amalekite raiders "eating and drinking and celebrating" over their plunder, it is the same act of festive feasting and merrymaking, only without the LORD at its center.
Nuances
1ato observe an appointed pilgrimage feast to the LORD
In a single poem, this verb describes storm-tossed sailors who "reel and stagger like a drunken man" as the sea heaves under them. The unsteady, spinning motion may be the same circling movement that lies behind the festival dance, now narrowed to dizziness rather than joy.
Whether this is truly the festival word used in a new way, or a separate look-alike verb, is debated by scholars (recorded below).
Reaches past festival-keeping to the physical motion of the body, reeling and staggering to and fro like a drunk man.Psa 107:27
Describes the reveling and dancing of celebration itself, even the loose merrymaking of raiders far from any sanctioned worship.1Sa 30:16
Both
Both center on the pilgrimage festival held to the LORD, and the verb is the act of keeping the very festival the noun names, often paired in a single command.Exo 12:14
Each is at home in the appointed feasts of the sacred calendar, where the people are told to observe the named festival and to celebrate it before God.Lev 23:41
Names the fixed annual pilgrimage festivals as set institutions on Israel's calendar: the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Weeks, and the Feast of Booths.Exo 23:15Exo 34:22Lev 23:34
Can stand for the festal sacrifice itself, the animal offered at the feast, so the word for the celebration comes to mean the victim on the altar.Exo 23:18Psa 118:27Mal 2:3
שָׂמַחTo rejoice or be glad as an inner feeling; keeping a feast is the outward act of observance that such joy accompanies.
Names the act of keeping an appointed pilgrimage festival on the calendar, observing a named feast such as Passover or Tabernacles as a public, scheduled event.Exo 23:14Deu 16:15Zec 14:16
Can describe the physical whirling and reeling of celebration, staggering as if dizzy, or noisy reveling with food and dancing.Psa 107:271Sa 30:16
Both
Both fill the celebrations of Israel's appointed feasts before the LORD: one is the keeping of the feast, the other the gladness poured into it.Deu 16:15Deu 16:14
Names the inner feeling of gladness itself, a state of the heart that needs no festival and can rise from any good thing: good news, a harvest, a victory.Exo 4:141Sa 2:1Psa 16:9
Can turn to malice, taking pleasure in an enemy's downfall or gloating over another's ruin.2Sa 1:20Job 31:29
ḥagag in the other biblical languages
ἑορτάζωGreek“to keep a festival”The Greek verb for keeping a feast; Paul uses it for observing the Passover festival.
Names the actual pilgrimage festivals Israel was commanded to keep on a fixed yearly cycle, the great appointed gatherings before God.Exo 23:14Deu 16:15Zec 14:16
Carries a bodily sense of festive movement: reeling and dancing in celebration, and even staggering about like a drunken man.1Sa 30:16Psa 107:27
Both
Both name the act of keeping or observing a festival as worship offered to God.Exo 12:141Co 5:8
Its single New Testament use turns festival-keeping into a way of living: Paul tells believers to keep the feast not with actual bread but with a continuous life of sincerity and truth.1Co 5:8
What scholars say about ḥagag
The root is widely connected with Arabic hajj, the pilgrimage, and its Hebrew noun hag denotes the pilgrimage festival kept at a sanctuary. The verb accordingly means to observe such a festival, most often the three annual pilgrimage feasts (Unleavened Bread and Passover, Weeks, and Booths), an observance that in the biblical picture includes procession, joy, and dance. HALOT, BDB, and DCH treat the festival sense as basic and secure. The one contested occurrence is Psalm 107:27, where the form is rendered "they reel": BDB lists this under the festival verb, understanding the whirling of the festal dance narrowed to the giddy staggering of storm-tossed sailors, whereas others derive the form instead from a separate verb meaning to move in a circle. TDOT's treatment of hag surveys the pilgrimage-festival background in detail.
Where scholars disagree about ḥagag
Whether the reeling verb in Psalm 107:27 belongs to this festival root or to a separate look-alike verb meaning "to move in a circle."
majorityIt is this verb: the circling, whirling movement of the festal dance narrowed to the giddy reeling of storm-tossed sailors.; BDB, s.v. חָגַג
minorityIt derives from a distinct verb of circular motion, unrelated to keeping a feast.; HALOT, s.v. חוג
Sources
HALOT, s.v. חגגlexicon
BDB, s.v. חָגַגlexicon
DCH, s.v. חגגlexicon
B. Kedar-Kopfstein, "חַג ḥāḡ," TDOT 4:201-213theological-dictionary