Aramaic word · H2305

חֶדְוָה

bechedvah

joy

Joy or gladness, especially as expressed openly. It is a rare, late word, shared by Aramaic and later biblical Hebrew.

A Biblical Aramaic word, from the parts of the Old Testament written in Aramaic. Why Aramaic?

Appears once in the Aramaic of the Old Testament. ·

What it means

joy

Aramaic of ched.vah (חֶדְוָה "joy" H2304)

Abridged from Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906), via STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0).

In depth

From the study of Ezra 6:16

Range of meaning

Joy or gladness, especially as expressed openly. It is a rare, late word, shared by Aramaic and later biblical Hebrew.

Against the English

'Joy' is accurate and all the major versions use it. NLT's 'great joy' adds an intensity the single word does not state. The English word can suggest a private inner feeling, but the setting here is communal and festive.

Used elsewhere in the period

This is the word's only use in biblical Aramaic. In Hebrew it appears in 1 Chronicles 16:27 and in Nehemiah 8:10, 'the joy of the LORD is your strength', where the people are told to eat rich food and drink sweet wine. That shows how closely it can be tied to a feast.

Where it appears

Ezra · 1

  1. Ezra 6:16 בְּחֶדְוָֽה׃ with joy

    Then the people of Israel—the priests, the Levites, and the rest of the exiles—celebrated the dedication of the house of God with joy.

    Here: The final word of the verse gives the manner of the whole event. It is the gladness of a public festival, which the sacrificial meals of the occasion would have made something shared and physical.

Word data: STEPBible.org (CC BY 4.0), main text only.