It’s now fall, and I have been musing on the verse Ecclesiastes 3:1, “To everything there is a season, and a time for every delight under heaven.” Pete Seeger wrote a tune to this verse, which the Byrds made famous with their guitar riff and harmonies.
I put my touch on the verse, translating the second half “every delight under heaven” rather than the usual “every purpose under heaven.” I did not make this translation choice arbitrarily. The Hebrew word, chayfets, is used in 39 other places in the Hebrew Bible, and it is most often translated as “delight,” such as Psalm 1:2 (I delight in the law of the Lord) and Psalm 40:8 (I delight in God’s will).
You, gentle reader, might not be here for a Hebrew lesson, but if you’ll allow one more etymological note, the poet Ross Gay notes that the prefix de- means “out from,” and so “de-light” means “out from light” like a shimmer or sparkle. Delight is not restricted to sights—the words “delicious” and “delectable” have the same etymological root as delight. Now that the season has turned, turned, turned, you might enjoy a delightful pumpkin-spice treat.
The passage in the book of Ecclesiastes goes on to mention times for war and for peace, for being born and for dying. Not every season, much less every moment, is delightful.
But it strikes me that the phrase, “a time for every delight under heaven,” might call us to hone our delight radars. To seek delight together. That doesn’t mean we ignore life’s frustrations or sorrows, but I believe that the more you try to find delight, the more delight finds you. And delight, much like love, is meant to be shared.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of the book with Wipf and Stock Publishers titled This Is the Day: A Year of Observing Unofficial Holidays about Ampersands, Bobbleheads, Buttons, Cousins, Hairball Awareness, Humbugs, Serendipity, Star Wars, Teenagers, Tenderness, Walking to School, Yo-Yos, and More. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina where he is a student of joy.
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