'Joy' in the Bible

For the Jews, there was light and gladness, joy and honor.

In every province and city, wherever the king's edict and his law came, there was gladness and joy for the Jews, a banquet and a {holiday}, and many of the people from the country [were] posing as Jews because the fear of the Jews had fallen on them.

[This was] on the thirteenth day of the month of Adar. [They] rested on the fourteenth [day] and made it a day of feasting and joy.

But the Jews who [were] in Susa gathered on the thirteenth and on the fourteenth day, and rested on the fifteenth day. And they made it a day of feasting and joy.

Therefore the Jews in the rural [areas], living in the rural towns, made the fourteenth month of Adar a day of joy and feasting, a festive day of giving gifts to each other.

as the day that the Jews {found relief} from their enemies, and the month which changed for them from sorrow to joy, and from a mourning ceremony to a {festive day}; to make them days of feasting and joy, and giving gifts to each other and to the poor.