exultant, jubilant: loudly celebrating, with a swagger of confidence that the good times will hold
This adjective describes joy you can hear from a distance. Behind it stands a verb for breaking out in loud, triumphant joy (עָלַז), and the adjective freezes that action into a description of what a place or a person is like. The ordinary word for glad (שָׂמֵחַ) covers everyday good cheer. This one is festival noise, shouting in the streets, and a crowd thoroughly pleased with itself.
All seven appearances sit in prophetic oracles, and four of them label a city at the very moment its celebration is about to stop:
- Jerusalem, a shouting town whose dead did not fall in battle (Isaiah 22:2)
- Tyre, the ancient port whose own feet will carry her far away (Isaiah 23:7)
- Jerusalem again, with thorns coming up over its houses of celebration (Isaiah 32:13)
- Nineveh, sitting secure and telling itself there is no one else (Zephaniah 2:15)
The remaining three uses turn the adjective into a name for people: the revelers whose racket falls silent in Isaiah 24:8, and, twice, those who exult in pride. That last phrase is the word at its sharpest, though it is not a verdict on celebrating as such, since the same phrase describes the fighters God himself summons. What the prophets are watching is what the celebrating rests on.