Word study

Gladness

3 Hebrew words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with “gladness”. English often uses one word where Hebrew or Greek has several, each with its own shade of meaning. Under each word are verses where it is translated this way; choose the word itself for its full study: every verse, how else it is translated, the forms it takes and what the dictionaries say.

At a glance

How often each original word is translated “gladness” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • שִׂמְחָה simchâhjoy, gladness, mirthtranslated this way 14 times of its 91 uses · Strong’s H8057Noun  ·  Translated: joy 48, gladness 14, rejoicing 6, pleasure 5

    2 Chronicles 29:30 Then King Hezekiah and his officials ordered the Levites to sing praises to the LORD in the words of David and of Asaph the seer. So they sang praises with gladness and bowed down and worshiped.

    Esther 8:16 For the Jews it was a time of light and gladness, of joy and honor.

    Full study and all 87 verses →
  • גִּיל gîlrejoicingtranslated this way 4 times of its 8 uses · Strong’s H1524Noun  ·  Translated: gladness 4, greatly 1, joy 1, age 1

    Psalm 45:15 They are led in with joy and gladness; they enter the palace of the king.

    Isaiah 16:10 Joy and gladness are removed from the orchard; no one sings or shouts in the vineyards. No one tramples the grapes in the winepresses; I have put an end to the cheering.

    Full study and all 8 verses →
  • שָׂשׂוֹן sâsônexultation, rejoicingtranslated this way 3 times of its 22 uses · Strong’s H8342Noun  ·  Translated: joy 17, Gladness 3, rejoicing 1, times of joy 1

    Esther 8:17 In every province and every city, wherever the king’s edict and decree reached, there was joy and gladness among the Jews, with feasting and celebrating. And many of the people of the land themselves became Jews, because the fear of the Jews had fallen upon them.

    Isaiah 35:10 So the redeemed of the LORD will return and enter Zion with singing, crowned with everlasting joy. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee.

    Full study and all 22 verses →
How to study a word well
  1. Start from the verse, not the dictionary. Find which Hebrew or Greek word stands in the verse you are studying. One English word often translates several different original words.
  2. Read every place the word is used. A word means what its writers used it to mean. The list of verses and the count by book show its range, and who uses it most.
  3. Look at how it is translated. A word rendered five different ways has a wider meaning than any one English word can carry.
  4. Notice the form. A command is not a statement, and a passive verb is something done to the subject. The form in your verse is part of the meaning.
  5. See what it keeps company with. The words that appear beside it again and again show how the Bible itself connects ideas.
  6. Then read the dictionaries. They give the considered view of scholars, with their evidence.
  7. Come back to the verse. Context decides. A word does not carry every one of its meanings into every verse, and where a word came from does not settle what it means in a sentence written centuries later.

What the Bible says about gladness: passages by topic →

Scripture text and translation counts: Berean Standard Bible. Full entry: Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906, public domain), in the digital edition Brown-Driver-Briggs Enhanced by unfoldingWord (Joel Ruark, J. de Joode), based on data by Eliran Wong and Stephen Ku; its additions are used under CC BY 4.0. Strong’s Hebrew Dictionary: Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible Project, CC BY 4.0. Hebrew-to-English verse numbering: original work of the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible available at https://github.com/openscriptures/morphhb, CC BY 4.0. We reformatted the data, linked the references to this site’s Bible text and left out words in other scripts that the source holds only as images. These are historical reference works; an entry gives its authors’ view, and a word’s meaning in any verse depends on how it is used there.