Heavenly homonym "chesed"

So you, by the help of your God, return; observe mercy and justice, and wait on your God continually.  --Hosea 12:6 (NKJV)

He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?  --Mica 6:8 (NKJV)

When my kids were little, we watched Sesame Street.  At various times in the program, they would show a letter or a number on the screen, and say, "Today our show is brought to you by the letter __." Another children's show that I liked to watch as an adult (this was before I had kids, thankfully) was PeeWee's Playhouse.  Every episode would have a "word of the day."  Whenever they said the word, the viewers were encouraged to "scream real loud."

Well, today, I have a "word of the day."  The word of the day is Chesed. It is a Hebrew word, usually translated Mercy, Kindness, Loving-Kindness.  It is closely aligned with the Greek word Charis found in the New Testament, meaning Grace.  (As you know, I am a big proponent of Grace.  I even wrote a book about it--you can click on the link at the top right corner of this page to see my book.  You can even order it if you like.)

According to Strong's Exhaustive Concordance, the KJV translates the word chesed 149 times as "mercy"; 40 times as "kindness", and 30 times as "goodness".  There are other various words translated from this term, one of 13 words that the Jewish rabbis say are descriptive of God Himself. They are "goodness" (12 times), "kindly" (five times), "merciful" (four times), "favor" (three times), "good" and "goodliness" (one time each).

In both of the verses cited at the beginning of this post, the word is translated "mercy".  In both the verses, however, the term is coupled with "justice".  I think mercy and justice are two sides of the same coin.  I think that those present-day Christians who love the New Testament Jesus, but eschew the Old Testament God (whom they think of as a God of Wrath)--those people, though well-meaning, sell God short.  A God who is defined by goodness and mercy, but who does not show justice and discipline, is more of a butler or personal assistant.  Of course that kind of God is an easy sell in today's PC world.

The Hebrew term chesed is used two different ways in the Bible.  We have already seen the term used in the sense of goodness, kindness, and faithfulness.  But it is also used in the sense of shame and reproach.  Leviticus 20;17 says, "And if a man shall take his sister, his father's daughter, or his mother's daughter, and see her nakedness, and she see his nakedness; it is a chesed, a wicked thing; and they shall be cut off in their people."  Psalm 57:3 says, "He shall send from heaven, and save me from the chesed, the reproach of him that would swallow me up. Selah. God shall send forth His chesed, His mercy and His truth."  Proverbs 14:34 says, "Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a chesed, a reproach to any people."  And Job 6:14 says, "To him that is afflicted, chesed, or pity should be shown him; but he forsakes the fear of the Almighty."

Apparently the term chesed in the Hebrew is a word with two, opposite meanings.  In the title of this post I called it a "homonym".  Technically, it should be called a "contronym."  It is like the English word "cleave", as in "to cling to" or "to split or sever."  Other English examples are "sanction" (as in give approval to, or impose a penalty on); screen (as in to show to a select audience, or to obstruct from one's view); and even left (as in remaining or departed.)

Today I was in a local Whataburger, waiting for my burger and fries, when a young mother of two came in and got in line with her daughter.  Several times she yelled across the dining room to her son, who appeared to be ten or eleven.  He was more interested in peeking around the drink dispenser to try to see what was going on in the kitchen.  Her daughter, who was maybe 15, stayed close-by.  When it came their turn to order, the son was still off by himself.  The mom did what any other mom would do.  She asked the daughter, who had stayed close, what she wanted.  Then she ordered something for her son without asking what he would like to have.  She certainly showed chesed, goodness and loving-kindness to the daughter.  She also showed chesed, I think, to the wayward son.  She had pity on him, and ordered him something to eat anyway, even though he was disobedient.  What he did was a reproach, a kind of chesed, in that he did not respect her enough to come to her (or even to answer her) when she called him.  She would have been well within her rights to refuse to order him anything.  She would have been justified in teaching him a lesson of obedience--if you don't come when I call, you get nothing.  The fact that she did show mercy on him exhibited her kindness and goodness to him.  If he had refused to eat what she ordered for him, that would have been a grievous sin.

I don't know this family, and I certainly don't know whether this boy makes it a habit to disobey.  I also don't know if he has a history of telling his mother, "I don't want the Whataburger Junior that you purchased for me; I want the chicken strip sandwich."  Certainly, if he shows this kind of disdain for his mother, she would have the right to disinherit him.  She could write him right out of her will.  When he turns 18, unless he repents and shows a genuine change of heart, she would be justified in kicking him out of her house and telling him to fend for himself.  To do otherwise would be to cheapen and demean herself in his eyes.  Psychologists call this behavior "enabling", and it is symptomatic of a dysfunctional relationship.

Listen to me, people.  God has a relationship with each one of us.  But that does not mean He will reward everybody.  God is not dysfunctional in any way, shape, or form.  If we have a heart that responds to Him, He will show mercy on us.  When we sin, He will show pity on us, and hide our reproach.  But if we continually reject Him, we cannot expect for Him to reward us eternally.  Justice demands that if we sever our relationship with Him, that He disinherit us.

Thankfully, He knows our hearts.  None of us will be surprised at the final Day of Judgment.  We will know His works, and they will be righteous.  He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy.  The folks that know this and put it into practice in this life will inherit eternal life with Him forever.  Those who reject Him will spend eternity without Him.  Jesus said "I will draw all men unto me," and it is not His will that any should perish.  So each of us makes a choice, and our eternity depends on it.  To those who say they can't believe in a God who would send people to hell, I say it was not God's choice.  God is ever-faithful to His word.  He is also ever-faithful to His people.

God's loving-kindness is that sure love which will not let Israel go. Not all Israel's persistent waywardness could ever destroy it. Though Israel be faithless, yet God remains faithful still. This steady, persistent refusal of God to wash his hands of wayward Israel is the essential meaning of the Hebrew word which is translated loving-kindness. In Jeremiah 2:2 the word chesed is rendered 'kindness,' the reference being to 'the kindness of thy youth,' and this phrase is paralleled by 'the love of thine espousals.' The meaning is not that Israel was more tender in her attitude towards God or in her affections, but that in the first days after the rescue from Egypt she was faithful to the marriage-covenant with God. The charge of the prophets is that Israel's loyalty to her covenant with God (Hosea 6:4, 'goodness' in the English versions) is 'as the morning cloud, and as the dew that goeth early away,' a regular feature of the Palestinian climate when once the spring rains are past.

The widening of the meaning of the Hebrew chesed, used as the covenant word and especially of the covenant between God and Israel, is due to the history of God's dealings with his covenant-people. The continual waywardness of Israel has made it inevitable that, if God is never going to let Israel go, then his relation to his people must in the main be one of loving-kindness, mercy, and goodness, all of it entirely undeserved. For this reason the predominant use of the word comes to include mercy and forgiveness as a main constituent in God's determined faithfulness to his part of the bargain. It is obvious, time and again, from the context that if God is to maintain the covenant he must exercise mercy to an unexampled degree. For this reason the Greek translators of the Old Testament (third century BC onwards) used the Greekeleos (mercy, pity) as their regular rendering, and Jerome (end of fourth century AD and beginning of fifth) followed with the Latin misericordia.

The loving-kindness of God towards Israel is therefore wholly undeserved on Israel's part. If Israel received the proper treatment for her stubborn refusal to walk in God's way, there would be no prospect for her of anything but destruction, since God's demand for right action never wavers one whit. Strict, however, as the demands for righteousness are, the prophets were sure that God's yearnings for the people of his choice are stronger still. Here is the great dilemma of the prophets, and indeed the dilemma of us all to this day. Which comes first, mercy or justice? Rashi (eleventh-century AD Jewish commentator) said that God gave 'precedence to the rule of mercy' and joined it 'with the rule of justice.' But this much is clear: when we try to estimate the depth and the persistence of God's loving-kindness and mercy, we must first remember his passion for righteousness. His passion for righteousness is so strong that he could not be more insistent in his demand for it, but God's persistent love for his people is more insistent still. The story of God's people throughout the centuries is that her waywardness has been so persistent that, if even a remnant is to be preserved, God has had to show mercy more than anything else. It is important to realize that though the Hebrew chesed can be translated by loving-kindness and mercy without doing violence to the context, yet we must always beware lest we think that God is content with less than righteousness. There is no reference to any sentimental kindness, and no suggestion of mercy apart from repentance, in any case where the Hebrew original is chesed. His demand for righteousness is insistent, and it is always at the maximum intensity. The loving-kindness of God means that his mercy is greater even than that. The word stands for the wonder of his unfailing love for the people of his choice, and the solving of the problem of the relation between his righteousness and his loving-kindness passes beyond human comprehension.

Bibliography: N.H. Snaith, Distinctive Ideas of the Old Testament, London (1944).

Choose right.  Choose life.  Choose God.  Jesus died so you would not have to endure the penalty of sin.  We can choose to be grafted in to the olive branch that is Israel, God's chosen people. That is the meaning of our word of the day.