exquisite pleasure that comes of being pampered: the delight of soft, indulgent treatment, and whatever gives that delight
This word names one particular kind of pleasure: not happiness in general, but the sweetness of being treated softly and indulgently. The family of words it belongs to describes a body that has never known hardship, skin that has never been roughened, a person always handled gently. Arabic keeps a matching word for a young woman's languid, coaxing charm, and that pairing is the clue: being pampered and glowing with the pleasure of it are one idea here, not two.
Because the pleasure is defined by how someone is treated rather than by what they happen to enjoy, the same word stretches remarkably far across its five appearances:
- Judah's deported children are the sons of her pampered delight, her darlings (Micah 1:16).
- Women driven off their land lose the house of their comfort, an ordinary home that was pleasant to them (Micah 2:9).
- A fool surrounded by fine living is as out of place as a slave ruling over princes (Proverbs 19:10).
- A king heaps up every amenity wealthy people crave, then judges the whole pile empty (Ecclesiastes 2:8).
- A lover, gazing at the beloved, cries out over her beauty amid the delights (Song of Songs 7:6).
What the word does not do is pass judgment. Nothing in it says whether being indulged is good or bad; each passage decides that by its setting. Micah wraps it in grief and makes it a mark of love. Proverbs puts it in the wrong hands and makes it ridiculous. Ecclesiastes amasses it and finds it hollow. The Song crowns the beloved with it and calls it good. A close relative of this word (עֹנֶג) is the one Isaiah uses when he tells his hearers to call the Sabbath a delight, and later Jewish tradition built a whole practice of Sabbath enjoyment on that verse.
The ancient Greek translation flattened all five occurrences into a single word for soft living (τρυφή), which in Greek already carried a sneer: luxury, softness, the vice of tyrants and courtesans. Read through that Greek lens, the Hebrew word looks more suspect than it actually is. In Hebrew it does not settle the question of whether a pleasure is legitimate. It raises the question: whose pleasure is this, in what circumstances, and at what cost?
Nuances
In Ecclesiastes 2:8 this word heads a phrase whose next two words are one of the famous puzzles of the Hebrew Bible, and what those words mean decides whether the delights listed here are women or material treasure.
- contestedThe phrase means something like "a lady, indeed ladies," that is, concubines, so the delights named are sensual: the pleasures men crave.; M. V. Fox, A Time to Tear Down and a Time to Build Up: A Rereading of Ecclesiastes (Eerdmans, 1999), pp. 179-181; T. Longman III, The Book of Ecclesiastes, NICOT (Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 92-93; R. Gordis, Koheleth: The Man and His World, 3rd ed. (Schocken, 1968)
- contestedThe phrase means "coffers, indeed a treasury of coffers," grounded in later Hebrew where the noun clearly means a chest or cabinet, so the delights named are amassed goods rather than people.; C.-L. Seow, Ecclesiastes, AB 18C (Doubleday, 1997), pp. 130-132
- contestedThe phrase cannot be decided on present evidence, though a sensual reference, whether concubines or female cupbearers, is the likelier of the options.; T. Kruger, Qoheleth, Hermeneia (Fortress, 2004), pp. 60-66
Disputed
Whether physical softness is the base sense of this word's root, with taking exquisite delight as a later figurative extension, or whether softness and delight are two faces of one original idea.
- majoritySoftness and delight belong together from the start: the root names indulgent treatment and the pleasure it produces as a single complex, which is exactly what the matching Arabic word for pampered, languid charm does.; HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner-Stamm, tr. Richardson; Brill, 1994-2000), s.v. תַּעֲנוּג and ענג; T. Kronholm, "ענג," TDOT XI (Eerdmans, 2001), pp. 212ff.
- minorityBeing soft or delicate is the base sense, and taking exquisite delight is a figurative development from it.; BDB, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Clarendon, 1906), s.v. תַּעֲנוּג, p. 772; E. Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language (Carta, 1987), s.v. ענג