Part of Speech: Noun
Strong's Number: H2656
Original Word: h?epes?
Usage Notes: "pleasure; delight; desire; request; affair; thing." None of the 39 occurrences of this word appear before First Samuel. All its occurrences are scattered through the rest of biblical literature.
This word often means "pleasure" or "delight": "Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord?" (1Sam 15:22, the first occurrence). Thus "the preacher [writer of Ecclesiastes] sought to find out acceptable [h?epes?] words: and that which was written was upright, even words of truth" (Eccl 12:10), words that were both true and aesthetically pleasing. A good wife works with "hands of delight," or hands which delight in her work because of her love for her family; "she seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly [in delight] with her hands" (Prov 31:13).
H?epes? can mean not simply what one takes pleasure in or what gives someone delight but one's wish or desire: "Although my house be not so with God; yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure: for this is all my salvation, and all my desire, although he make it not to grow" (2Sam 23:5). "To do one's desire" is to grant a request (1Kings 5:8). "Stones of desire" are precious stones (Isa 54:12).
Third, h?epes? sometimes represents one's affairs as that in which one takes delight: "…There is…a time to every purpose [literally, delight] under the heaven" (Eccl 3:1). In Isa 58:13 the first occurrence of this word means "pleasure" or "delight," while the last occurrence indicates an affair or matter in which one delights: "If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable; and shalt honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words."
Finally, in one passage this word means "affair" in the sense of a "thing" or "situation": "If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter [nasb, "sight"]…" (Eccl 5:8).
Usage Number: 2
Part of Speech: Verb
Strong's Number: H2654
Original Word: h?apes?
Usage Notes: "to take pleasure in, take care of, desire, delight in, have delight in." This verb, which occurs 72 times in biblical Hebrew, has cognates in Arabic, Phoenician, Syriac, and Arabic. H?apes? means "to delight in" in 2Sa 15:26: "But if he thus say, I have no delight in thee; behold, here am I, let him do to me as seemeth good unto him."
Usage Number: 3
Part of Speech: Adjective
Strong's Number: H2655
Original Word: h?apes?
Usage Notes: "delighting in, having pleasure in." This adjective appears 12 times in biblical Hebrew. The word is found in Psa 35:27: "Let the Lord be magnified, which hath pleasure in the prosperity of his servant."
