delight: the fond, repeated pleasure someone takes in a person or thing, and the cherished person or thing itself
This word is always plural in shape, and the plural is not counting. It heaps the idea up, closer to "sheer delight" than to a list of delights. It comes from a verb at home with small children (שָׁעַע), the verb used of a baby being petted and of a child amusing itself, and the noun keeps that warmth. It is fondness, not solemn satisfaction.
It points in two directions, and the difference is worth catching. Usually it names what a person treasures: five times in Psalm 119 the writer says God's instruction is his delight, and he says it under pressure, with trouble and anguish closing in (Psalm 119:143). But the word can also be turned toward the one who is loved. Ephraim is called a child of delight in Jeremiah 31:20, which is Hebrew for a darling, and Judah is the planting God doted on in Isaiah 5:7.
The two uses meet in Proverbs 8, where Wisdom is God's delight day after day and the human race is hers. They are less separate than they look, because Hebrew often names a thing by the pleasure it gives. To say "you are my delight" is at once a report about my heart and a title for you.
Hebrew keeps several words in this area apart, and they are not interchangeable:
- Loud, public gladness, the kind a feast or a homecoming produces, is a different word (שִׂמְחָה).
- Pleasure in getting what one wants, or in what one has resolved to do, is a different word again (חֵפֶץ).
- The soft pleasure of comfort and fine living has its own word too (עֹנֶג).
This one is the affectionate member of that group: the pleasure of doting on someone.