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What the Bible says about Hesed
(From Forerunner Commentary)

Matthew 5:7

Mercy begins with the love of God. He is always the source of righteous character and righteous deeds. Without God's love as the source of those things and our guide, our "merciful" good works (as we see them) are suspect. If they do not have God as the source, we cannot trust them to be truly good. Jesus points out the Pharisees as the opposite of what He wants. They did their good works for selfish reasons, as both Matthew 6 and Matthew 23 show. They did their works to be seen by others, that is, hypocritically. They did not do them primarily to help the needy. They did them so others would say, "Wow, what a righteous person that guy is." Jesus calls them what they were—hypocrites.

Conversely, the mercies of God are untainted by this idea of "what can doing this get me," because the love of God is the agape love. It is selfless, a divine sacrificial love that gives, not for something in return but because it is good and right to do so.

The structure of this beatitude implies a reciprocal relationship between the merciful God and the converted Christian. It is a covenant relationship like the agreement between a lord and a vassal, bound by oaths and promises.

Here, the agreement is that God has given mercy, which obliges the Christian to show mercy to others, and God then will continue to extend mercy. Both God and the Christian fulfill their roles, not to get something like salvation. Both do their parts out of love because it is good. It is what pleases God and helps other people.

While the word is not present in Jesus' beatitude, the structure of this idea harkens to a pervasive Old Testament concept found in the Hebrew word hesed, which means "covenant loyalty." It can also connote "loyal or steadfast love." It is frequently translated in the Old Testament as "favor," "lovingkindness," "kindness," "goodness," or "mercy."

Because we have made a covenant with God to be molded into His image, we have vowed through our baptism to uphold this idea of hesed. Our baptism is a sign of our covenant with God. By it, we have promised to keep the New Covenant. In this beatitude, Jesus reminds us that to remain loyal to Him, our covenantal agreement requires us to show mercy just as God has shown mercy to us.

Richard T. Ritenbaugh
The Merciful

Galatians 5:22

Chrestotes in Greek and hesed in Hebrew are most frequently translated into the English word "kindness." Chrestotes, according to The Complete Word Study Dictionary by Spiros Zodhiates, p. 1482, means

benignity, kindness, usefulness. It often occurs with philanthropy; forbearance, and is the opposite of severity or cutting something short and quickly. . . . Chrestotes is translated "good," "kindness," "gentleness." It is the grace which pervades the whole nature, mellowing all which would be harsh and austere. . . . The word is descriptive of one's disposition and does not necessarily entail acts of goodness.

William Barclay, in The Daily Bible Study Series on Galatians 5:22, p. 51, adds that the Rheims Version translates chrestotes in II Corinthians 6:6 as "sweetness"; that Christ describes His yoke in Matthew 11:30 as chrestos, meaning that it does not chafe; and that the Greeks would describe wine as chrestos, that is, mellow. With these illustrations, it becomes clear that this word emphasizes the spirit in which an act is done.

Hesed is more complex, an especially rich word that is at times translated as "lovingkindness," "mercy," "love," "grace," and even "loyalty" and "devotion" in some modern versions. Some modern critics argue that the word suggests loyalty, something given because of obligation, because the writers sometimes use it in a context with a covenant relationship, such as God's covenant with Israel or a marriage.

Other scholars review the same material and agree that relationships are present (love almost necessitates a subject-object relation), but assert that hesed (love, mercy, kindness, etc.) is freely given. Freedom of decision to give is essential. The help given by the person showing mercy or kindness is done freely. This seems to be the correct usage because the other can reduce love, mercy, and kindness to a merely obligatory, mechanical, legal act rather than an act of free-moral agency of the heart.

A Pharisee could meet the legal demands of a covenant obligation, but the New Covenant requires a spirit considerably higher (Matthew 5:20). The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, vol. 1, p. 306, quotes Hebrew scholar Dom Rembert Sorg as writing that hesed is "really the Old Testament reflex [reflected image, likeness, or reproduction] of 'God is love.'"

God's love is hardly just obligatory, given all the expressions of feeling for Israel and the church accounted to Him in the Scriptures. Thus these two words, rich in meaning and usage, clearly reveal that kindness is an active quality God greatly desires His children to exhibit.

John W. Ritenbaugh
The Fruit of the Spirit: Kindness


Find more Bible verses about Hesed:
Hesed {Nave's}
 




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