to be glad, and to show that gladness openly in celebration; also, of whatever produces the joy, to make someone glad.
This is the Bible's ordinary, all-purpose word for joy. Hebrew has several joy words, and the others belong mostly to poetry and worship: one that means much the same thing and almost always stands beside this one (גִּיל), one for exulting (שׂוּשׂ), and one for the shout or song that joy produces (רָנַן). This one goes anywhere: a brother glad to see his brother, a father glad about a wise son, a foreign king pleased by a letter, harvesters glad at a sight in the field, a crowd at a coronation, wine at a party. Its plainness is the point. When Hebrew simply wants to say "glad," this is the word it reaches for.
The joy it names is rarely a private mood. It is something you can see and hear, and it usually arrives with a list of things people are doing: eating and drinking, singing and music, festival clothes, oil, dancing, a shout. Deuteronomy turns this into a command. Israel is told to rejoice before the LORD at the appointed feasts, and to bring along the people with no land of their own, the foreigner, the orphan and the widow, so that nobody is left out of the celebration. Chronicles goes further and fills every scene of worship with singers and instruments, as though gladness were part of the required equipment.
The word itself does not say what the joy is about. The situation does, and the range is wide:
- ordinary human gladness over good news, a wife, a wise son, a good harvest
- the commanded festival celebration held before the LORD at his sanctuary
- gladness that takes God himself as its reason: his rule, his rescue, his name, his instruction
- relief and celebration when a rescue comes, and joy at the restoration the prophets promise
- in Ecclesiastes, simply enjoying the food, the drink and the work God has handed you
- and the ugly opposite, gloating over someone else's downfall
The word also runs the other way. Wine, good news, a kind word, perfume, a year at home with a new wife, and God's own instruction are all said to gladden a heart, so the same verb can name the thing that produces joy rather than the joy itself. Occasionally God is the one who rejoices: one psalm asks that the LORD be glad in what he has made, and Isaiah says the Lord takes no gladness in the young men of a corrupt generation.
Nuances
Whether the verb in this line keeps its ordinary sense, so that the light of the righteous "rejoices," or carries a supposed older sense "shine, brighten up."
- majorityThe line is a bold poetic image: the light itself is said to rejoice, that is, to burn brightly and steadily, set against the lamp of the wicked that goes out.; DCH (Clines, ed.), s.v. שׂמח; G. Vanoni, "śāmaḥ," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT) 14:142-157
- minorityThe verb here means "shine, brighten up," which this line was taken to preserve as the root's primary sense.; BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), s.v. שׂמח; W. Gesenius and F. Buhl, Hebräisches und aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament, 17th ed. (Leipzig: Vogel, 1915), s.v. שׂמח
Whether Ecclesiastes' repeated call to eat, drink and rejoice is a genuine affirmation of joy as God's gift or a resigned counsel of pleasure in the face of life's fleetingness.
- contestedThe joy passages, spaced deliberately through the book, are its positive theological center: what God gives is to be received with gratitude rather than grasped at.; R. N. Whybray, "Qoheleth, Preacher of Joy," Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 23 (1982): 87-98; Norbert Lohfink, Qoheleth: A Continental Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003)
- contestedQohelet commends pleasure rather than joy: the concrete acts of eating, drinking and companionship are a God-given portion that functions as a distraction from the awareness of futility.; Michael V. Fox, A Time to Tear Down and a Time to Build Up: A Rereading of Ecclesiastes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999)
- contestedThe commendations are a pastoral response to unstable times, urging readers to receive what can be received as gift under conditions they cannot predict or control.; Choon-Leong Seow, Ecclesiastes (Anchor Bible 18C; New York: Doubleday, 1997)
- minorityJoy in these speeches is resignation rather than the book's final word; the speaker's voice is framed and corrected by the closing verses.; Tremper Longman III, The Book of Ecclesiastes (NICOT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998)