finery: the array of ornaments, most often gold, that is put on to make the wearer splendid
This is a word for finery as a whole rather than for one piece of it: not a single bracelet or ring but everything a person puts on, and in practice that finery is gold. It belongs to scenes where beauty is on display:
- a bride who could no more forget her wedding finery than a young woman could forget hers
- a woman who bathes, paints her eyes, and puts her jewelry on
- the daughters of Israel dressed in scarlet, with gold ornaments set on their clothing
Because such finery announces joy and honor, taking it off says something. When Israel hears at Sinai that God will not travel in their midst, no one puts his finery on, and the people strip it off and leave it at the mountain. Removing the jewelry is the outward shape of grief and of shame.
Two uses reach further than jewelry. Once the word names the gear strapped onto a horse or a mule, the bit and bridle that hold the animal in check, which is finery only in the sense of what is put on a body. And in Ezekiel's picture of Jerusalem as a growing girl, a doubled form of the word describes the girl's own bloom: she came to her fullest adornment, and yet she was naked, so what adorns her is her body itself and not anything she wore.
Hebrew has narrower words for single pieces, such as one jewel or pendant (חֲלִי) or a bride's sash (קִשֻּׁרִים). This is the general one, and the writers like to set it beside the matching verb, so that a woman adorns herself with adornment.
Nuances
What the word denotes in Psalm 103:5, where the received Hebrew text is difficult.
- contestedThe received text stands, and the word names a person's prime or vigor, the adornment of youth that God satisfies and renews.; HALOT, s.v. עֲדִי
- contestedNo settled sense can be given here: the occurrence is textually doubtful, and the ancient translators evidently read something other than the word for finery.; BDB, s.v. עֲדִי