ḥadah

חָדָה

HebrewH2302“rejoice, be glad, ...”

Appears 3 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Exo 18:9Job 3:6Psa 21:6(7)

Root family

ḥadahחָדָהto rejoice3H2302
- ḥedvahחֶדְוָהjoy2H2304

Word studyResearch-gradekhah-DAHverb

What ḥadah means

to rejoice, be glad: to feel joy, or to make someone glad

TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong

Hebrew has a whole family of words for joy, and this is the rarest of them. As a verb it appears only three times, and where it does it means simply to be glad or to rejoice. It sits so close to the ordinary Hebrew word for gladness (שָׂמַח) that Psalm 21:6 sets the two side by side, using the common word to explain the rare one: God "makes him glad with joy."

Its handful of uses fall into two shades of the same idea. Most often someone feels joy: Jethro is glad when he hears everything God has done for Israel. Once, instead, someone is made glad by another: in a royal psalm, God himself gladdens the king. The joy is the same in both; only its direction changes, from feeling glad to causing gladness.

The word carries a faint air of the archaic and the elevated. Its related noun for "joy" turns up mostly in the latest books of the Old Testament, including the well-known line that "the joy of the LORD is your strength," and scholars think the whole word group, common in the neighboring language of Aramaic, was revived in Hebrew after the exile. Two of the verb's three appearances also fall on notoriously difficult verses, where it is genuinely unclear whether the word is "rejoice" at all (see the cautions below).

Nuances

1ato rejoice, be glad: to feel joy

Exo 18:9Job 3:6

Job 3:6

Whether the verb in Job 3:6 is חדה "rejoice" or a form of יחד "be joined, be counted," since the unpointed consonants sustain both readings.

majorityThe verb is a form of יחד "be joined/counted": let that night not be joined to the days of the year. This is the reading behind the Targum, Peshitta, and Vulgate (non conputetur, "let it not be counted") and most modern translations.; Vulgate, Peshitta, and Targum on Job 3:6; C. L. Seow, Job 1-21 (Illuminations, 2013)
minorityThe traditional vocalization points the verb as חדה "rejoice": let that night not rejoice among the days of the year.; R. Gordis, The Book of Job (JTSA, 1978); N. H. Tur-Sinai, The Book of Job (1957)
minorityThe poet intended both senses at once, a deliberate double meaning ("be joined to" and "rejoice in" the days of the year) that the consonantal text was designed to carry.; G. Rendsburg, 'Double Polysemy in Genesis 49:6 and Job 3:6,' CBQ 44 (1982): 48-51

1bto make glad, gladden: to cause someone to rejoice

Psa 21:6(7)

What ḥadah does not mean

Do not lean on the fact that this rare word was chosen. It is a near-synonym of the ordinary Hebrew verb for gladness, and what sets it apart is mainly its rareness and slightly elevated flavor, not a distinct kind of joy. A translation that renders it plainly as "rejoice" is not missing a hidden meaning.

Be aware, too, that two of its three occurrences sit on uncertain ground. In Job 3:6 the ancient versions and most modern translations read a different Hebrew word meaning "be joined" or "be counted" rather than "rejoice," and some scholars think both senses were meant at once. In Exodus 18:9 the form is unusual and the oldest Greek translation rendered it "was amazed" instead of "rejoiced." Any interpretation that hangs on the precise word in those two verses should be held loosely.

What scholars say about ḥadah

The verb חדה is one of the rarest members of Biblical Hebrew's large joy-vocabulary, attested only three times (Exodus 18:9; Job 3:6; Psalm 21:7 [English 21:6]), alongside the noun חֶדְוָה (Nehemiah 8:10; 1 Chronicles 16:27; Aramaic Ezra 6:16). BDB, HALOT, DCH, and Gesenius18 treat it as a single genuine "rejoice" root, comparing Aramaic and Syriac ḥdī, Akkadian ḫadû "to rejoice" and the noun ḫidûtu, and (debatably) Ugaritic ḥdy; the Akkadian correspondence raises a phonological objection that Tropper (2003) and Kogan have sought to answer. A proposed second root חדה "to see, behold" (Dahood, on the strength of Ugaritic ḥdy) is rejected by Ginsberg and others on sound-change grounds and is not adopted by the mainstream lexica. The noun's concentration in the demonstrably late corpus, its contrast with the standard joy-words שִׂמְחָה and שָׂשׂוֹן, and its robust Aramaic attestation lead Wagner (BZAW 96) and Hurvitz to treat חֶדְוָה as a Late Biblical Hebrew Aramaism, though Young, Rezetko, and Ehrensvärd caution that a single such feature cannot date a text; the most defensible synthesis is an old but always-rare Hebrew joy-root whose nominal derivative became common only after the exile under Aramaic influence. Two of the three verbal occurrences are textual cruxes: at Exodus 18:9 the anomalous form and the Septuagint's ἐξέστη "was amazed" (Propp) puzzle the tradition, and at Job 3:6 the versions and most moderns read יחד "be joined/counted" while Rendsburg (CBQ 44, 1982) argues for a deliberate double meaning; Psalm 21:6, read causatively "you make him glad," is uncontested. The theological weight of the root falls on the late noun, especially Nehemiah 8:10, where "the joy of the LORD is your stronghold" (Blenkinsopp, Williamson).

Where scholars disagree about ḥadah

Whether Hebrew חדה is a single genuine "rejoice" root, and whether a separate root חדה "to see, behold" ever existed in Hebrew.

majorityOne genuine but rare "rejoice" root; there is no separate "see" root in Hebrew.; BDB, HALOT, DCH, and Gesenius18, s.v. חדה; H. L. Ginsberg, 'Lexicographical Notes' (VTSup 16, 1967)
minorityA separate root חדה "to see, behold," linked to Ugaritic ḥdy and to Hebrew חזה, underlies some occurrences.; M. Dahood, Psalms (Anchor Bible) and 'A New Translation of Gen 49:6a,' Biblica 36 (1955)

In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

Brown, Driver, Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. חדה II and חֶדְוָהlexicon
Koehler, Baumgartner, Stamm, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (HALOT), s.v. חדהlexicon
D. J. A. Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (DCH), s.v. חדהlexicon
R. Meyer, H. Donner et al., Gesenius Hebräisches und Aramäisches Handwörterbuch, 18th ed., s.v. חדהlexicon
M. Dahood, Psalms (Anchor Bible)commentary
H. L. Ginsberg, 'Lexicographical Notes,' in Hebräische Wortforschung (VTSup 16, 1967), 71-72article
G. Rendsburg, 'Double Polysemy in Genesis 49:6 and Job 3:6,' CBQ 44 (1982): 48-51article
M. Wagner, Die lexikalischen und grammatikalischen Aramaismen im alttestamentlichen Hebräisch (BZAW 96, 1966)monograph
A. Hurvitz, A Concise Lexicon of Late Biblical Hebrew (Brill, 2014)lexicon
I. Young, R. Rezetko, M. Ehrensvärd, Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts (2008)monograph
J. Tropper, 'Akkadian ḫ and West Semitic *ḥ,' SAOC 67 (2003)article
W. H. C. Propp, Exodus 1-18 (Anchor Bible, 1999)commentary
C. L. Seow, Job 1-21 (Illuminations, 2013)commentary
J. Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah (OTL, 1988)commentary
H. G. M. Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah (WBC, 1985)commentary

ḥadah

What ḥadah means

to rejoice, be glad: to feel joy, or to make someone glad

Nuances

What scholars say about ḥadah

Where scholars disagree about ḥadah

Sources

All attested forms of חָדָה

piel imperfect 2ms

qal consecutive-imperfect 3ms

qal jussive 3ms

What ḥadah means

to rejoice, be glad: to feel joy, or to make someone glad

Nuances

Related words

The English words used to translate ḥadah

How ḥadah differs from similar Hebrew words

ḥadah in the other biblical languages

What scholars say about ḥadah

Where scholars disagree about ḥadah

Sources

All attested forms of חָדָה

piel imperfect 2ms

qal consecutive-imperfect 3ms

qal jussive 3ms