Covenant Words

Exodus 34 is a second beginning. In chapter 32 Israel made a golden calf at the foot of the mountain where they had just promised to do all that the LORD had spoken, and Moses broke the tablets of the covenant. In chapter 33 Moses interceded, and asked to see God's glory, and God promised to make his goodness pass before him and to proclaim his name. In chapter 34 Moses climbs the mountain again with two new tablets, and the promise is kept. The Old Testament Survey lesson Show Me Your Glory tells that story at length; this lesson looks at the words.

In the Westminster Leningrad Codex (WLC) the proclamation begins with the divine name, יְהוָה (YHWH, the LORD), and then אֵל רַחוּם וְחַנּוּן (El rachum vechannun, a God compassionate and gracious). רַחוּם (rachum) and חַנּוּן (channun) are adjectives, and each occurs just thirteen times in the WLC, nearly always of God; the clearest exception is Psalm 112:4, where the BSB takes the gracious, compassionate, and righteous to be the upright who fear the LORD. Then אֶרֶךְ אַפַּיִם (erekh appayim, slow to anger), which is literally long of nostrils, an idiom the fifth lesson of this module explains. Then וְרַב־חֶסֶד וֶאֱמֶת (verav-chesed ve'emet, and great in hesed and faithfulness), the phrase the BSB renders abounding in loving devotion and faithfulness.

Verse 7 continues with three participles, each describing what God goes on doing. נֹצֵר חֶסֶד לָאֲלָפִים (notser chesed la'alafim, keeping hesed for thousands): נֹצֵר (notser) is the qal participle, masculine singular, of נָצַר (natsar, to keep, guard). נֹשֵׂא עָוֺן וָפֶשַׁע וְחַטָּאָה (nose avon vafesha vechatta'ah, bearing iniquity, transgression and sin): נֹשֵׂא (nose) is the qal participle of נָשָׂא (nasa, to lift, carry), the ordinary verb for picking something up, which the BSB renders forgiving. To forgive, in this verse, is to lift and carry away. Then the other side: וְנַקֵּה לֹא יְנַקֶּה (venaqqeh lo yenaqqeh, but clearing he will not clear), a piel infinitive absolute followed by a piel imperfect, third person masculine singular, of the same root נקה (naqah, to be clean, free of guilt). The doubling is the emphatic construction Module 4 taught you with you will surely die in Genesis 2:17, and it is what lies behind the BSB's He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. Finally פֹּקֵד עֲוֺן אָבוֹת עַל־בָּנִים (poqed avon avot al-banim, visiting the iniquity of fathers on children), to the third and fourth generation.

Notice the proportion. Mercy is for thousands; the visiting of iniquity reaches to the third and fourth. The same God who will by no means clear the guilty is the one who lifts iniquity. The verse holds both together and does not explain how. The Bible goes on to explain it in its own way, and the Christian reader will think of the cross, but the preacher's first task is to let the verse say both things at the strength it says them.

This is why the passage can fairly be called Israel's creed. The inquiry found it in the Law, the Prophets and the Writings, in Numbers, Nehemiah, the Psalms (86:15, 103:8, 145:8 and elsewhere), Joel, Jonah and Nahum, each time adapted to its use. Jewish tradition, following the Talmud, counts thirteen attributes of mercy in these verses and still recites them in the prayers of the fast days and the high holy days. When an Old Testament writer wanted to say in a sentence who God is, this is the sentence he usually reached for.

חֶסֶד (hesed, often written chesed, loyal love, kindness) occurs 249 times in the Hebrew Old Testament, counted in the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible, the free tagged WLC on GitHub (openscriptures/morphhb). More than half of those, 129, are in the Psalms, and Psalm 136 alone has it 26 times, once in every verse: His loving devotion endures forever. It is a word Israel sang. It is also a word Israel did: one of the commonest phrases it stands in is עָשָׂה חֶסֶד עִם (asah chesed im, to do hesed with someone), as in Naomi's blessing in Ruth 1:8, May the LORD show you loving devotion, literally may the LORD do hesed with you. Hesed is not first a feeling. It is something one person does for another.

The BSB's usual rendering is loving devotion, a phrase that stands in more than 180 of its verses. But it does not use one English phrase everywhere, and you can see why if you follow the word through. Abraham's servant blesses God, who has not withheld His kindness and faithfulness (Genesis 24:27). Rahab asks the spies to show kindness to her family (Joshua 2:12). Hosea complains that Israel's loyalty is like a morning mist (Hosea 6:4). Psalm 23:6 has goodness and mercy, and Hosea 6:6 has I desire mercy, not sacrifice. In 1 Kings 20:31 Ben-hadad's servants have heard that the kings of Israel are merciful, literally kings of hesed. Other English translations make other choices: the King James Version uses mercy most often and also lovingkindness, a word usually credited to Miles Coverdale's Bible of 1535; others have steadfast love, unfailing love or faithful love. Each is an attempt to hold together loyalty and kindness, which English keeps apart and hesed does not.

There is a trap here that the tools can set for you. Two verses, Leviticus 20:17 and Proverbs 14:34, have a word spelled exactly like hesed that means a disgrace or a shame: sin is a disgrace to any people. Most scholars treat it as a different word that happens to share the spelling, perhaps related to an Aramaic root meaning to reproach. The tagged WLC keeps the two apart, but Strong's number H2617 puts both under one entry, so a Blue Letter Bible search will mix the disgrace verses in with the kindness verses. Always read the verse before you count it.

You will sometimes hear that hesed is untranslatable. It is better to say that no single English word covers its range, which is true of most important words in any language. Translators manage hesed in every verse; they manage it differently, because they are choosing which part of its range the verse brings forward. That is exactly what you will learn to do in this module.

The modern study of hesed begins with Nelson Glueck, later famous as an archaeologist, whose doctoral dissertation on the word was published in German in 1927 and in English, as Hesed in the Bible, in 1967. Glueck argued that hesed is conduct that corresponds to a relationship of mutual rights and duties: between relatives, host and guest, allies, ruler and subject, and above all God and Israel in the covenant. Its core, for him, was loyalty, faithfulness to what the relationship requires. That is why hesed so often stands beside berit (covenant) and emet (faithfulness), and why some translators came to prefer covenant love or steadfast love. The strength of Glueck's case is the company the word keeps, and verses like 1 Samuel 20:8, where David asks for hesed because Jonathan has brought him into a covenant.

Others thought Glueck had made hesed too much a matter of duty. The German scholar Hans Joachim Stoebe, in a study published in 1952, argued that the word's heart is goodness and generosity freely shown, kindness that goes beyond anything owed, and he pointed to its frequent pairing with words for mercy and grace. Katharine Doob Sakenfeld's The Meaning of Hesed in the Hebrew Bible (1978) took the question up again by examining every use. She concluded that hesed is typically an act of rescue or provision by someone in a position to help, for someone in real need, within a relationship that already exists. The helper is expected to act, so there is an element of obligation, but he is free not to, and no one could force him, so there is an element of freedom as well. Rahab's request in Joshua 2:12 fits this well: she has helped the spies at the risk of her life, and now asks them to help her in turn. Gordon R. Clark's study of 1993 examined hesed alongside the words it is grouped with, such as emet, emunah and the words for compassion, and found that it shares something with each of them without being the same as any.

What is settled? Nearly everyone now agrees on three things. Hesed belongs within a relationship, not between strangers, though as Rahab shows the act itself can open one. Hesed is active: it is done, not merely felt. And hesed lasts: it is the word Israel used for a love that holds when the other party has failed, as in Lamentations 3:22, written over the ruins of Jerusalem: Because of the loving devotion of the LORD we are not consumed. What is still weighed is how much of the word is obligation and how much freedom, and whether a covenant is always in view. Both sides have texts. Deuteronomy 7:9 speaks of the faithful God who keeps His covenant of loving devotion for a thousand generations of those who love Him and keep His commandments; Isaiah 54:10 promises that God's loving devotion will not depart even if the mountains are removed. Some preachers call hesed conditional and some unconditional; the word itself does not settle that debate, and a preacher should not claim that it does.

Two of the words beside hesed in Exodus 34:6 deserve a note of caution. רַחוּם (rachum, compassionate) comes from the same three letters as רֶחֶם (rechem, womb), and you will hear it preached that God's compassion is literally womb-love, a mother's love for the child she carried. Phyllis Trible, in God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (1978), argued with care that the link between womb and compassion is real in the language and is drawn on deliberately in some texts. James Barr's The Semantics of Biblical Language (1961) warned the other way, that a root does not tell you what a speaker meant each time he used a word, and that many Israelites who called God rachum were thinking of compassion, not of wombs. Both cautions are worth keeping: the family resemblance is real, and it does not license every sermon built on it. Where a text itself brings the mother's love forward, as some prophetic texts do, a preacher may follow it. Where it does not, he should say compassionate and move on.

אֱמֶת (emet, faithfulness, reliability, truth) occurs 127 times, and in 33 verses it stands beside hesed, as it does in Exodus 34:6. The pair is so common that it often works as a single idea, faithful love or loyal kindness, and some translations render it that way. On its own emet means what can be relied on. A sure sign in Joshua 2:12 is an אוֹת אֱמֶת (ot emet, a sign of reliability). A true word is one that will hold. When Psalm 117:2 says that the faithfulness of the LORD endures forever, it is emet.

Emet belongs to a family of words built on the root אמן (aman, to be firm, reliable). The best known is אָמֵן (amen), the word that says this is firm, so be it, which Israel answered to the curses of the covenant in Deuteronomy 27:15-26 and which the church still says. Another is אֱמוּנָה (emunah, faithfulness, steadiness), the word in Habakkuk 2:4 behind the righteous will live by faith; the Hebrew has his faith or his faithfulness, and the word covers both, a point worth remembering when you see how the Greek Old Testament and Paul handled the verse. The verb in its hiphil stem, הֶאֱמִין (he'emin), means to consider reliable, to trust, to believe. Genesis 15:6 says Abram believed the LORD: וְהֶאֱמִן בַּיהוָה (vehe'emin ba-YHWH), hiphil perfect, third person masculine singular, with the conjunction. To believe God, in Hebrew, is to treat him as the one who is firm.

That family resemblance is real and helpful, because the root is visible in the forms and the meanings plainly connect. But be careful with two things you may hear. The first is that emet is spelled with the first, a middle and the last letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and so means that God's truth runs from beginning to end. The Talmud calls truth the seal of God, and later readers noticed the spelling, but the observation is about the letters, not the meaning, and it would be equally true of any word that happened to be spelled that way. The second is that believing in Hebrew means leaning your whole weight on something, as though that picture were inside the verb. It is a fair illustration of trust, but it is not what the word says. Let the word mean reliable, and let the passage show what relying looks like.

בְּרִית (berit, covenant) occurs 284 times in the Hebrew Old Testament. The verse after the creed uses it: in Exodus 34:10 the LORD says, Behold, I am making a covenant, and the Hebrew is כֹּרֵת בְּרִית (koret berit), literally cutting a covenant. כֹּרֵת (koret) is the qal participle of כָּרַת (karat, to cut). The verb and the noun stand together in about eighty verses. The idiom seems to come from the rite of cutting animals in two and passing between the pieces, which Abram prepares in Genesis 15:10 and which Jeremiah 34:18 describes as the oath of a covenant that was broken. On that day, Genesis 15:18 says, the LORD made a covenant with Abram, כָּרַת יְהוָה אֶת־אַבְרָם בְּרִית (karat YHWH et-avram berit, the LORD cut with Abram a covenant).

Where does the word berit come from? No one knows. Scholars have suggested a link with an Akkadian word for a fetter or bond, with an Akkadian word for between, and with a Hebrew verb meaning to eat, since covenants were often sealed with a meal. Each has defenders and none has won. That is a useful lesson in itself. If the origin of a word as important as covenant is unknown, and we still know perfectly well what it means, then meaning does not live in origins. It lives in use. Berit is a binding commitment, solemnly made, usually with an oath, between God and people or between people, which places both sides in a relationship with obligations. We know that from the hundreds of places it is used, not from its roots.

Use teaches something else too: the thing can be present where the word is absent. 2 Samuel 7, where God promises David a house and a throne forever, never uses the word berit. Yet 2 Samuel 23:5 has David speak of an everlasting covenant, and Psalm 89:3 has God say, I have made a covenant with My chosen one, I have sworn to David My servant. A word study of berit alone would miss the chapter on which the Davidic covenant rests. James Barr's warning, that a study of words is not the same as a study of ideas, applies here exactly: to understand covenant, you must study the passages, not only the occurrences of the word.

Exodus 34:27-28 ends the scene by joining the words of this lesson. The LORD tells Moses that in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel, and Moses writes on the tablets the words of the covenant, which the Hebrew calls עֲשֶׂרֶת הַדְּבָרִים (aseret haddevarim, the ten words), the Ten Commandments. How the covenants with Noah, Abraham, Israel at Sinai and David relate to one another, and to the new covenant of Jeremiah 31:31, is one of the great questions on which Christians are divided: covenant theology, dispensational theology and newer mediating views such as progressive covenantalism each read the pattern differently. The systematic theology track takes that question up. A word study can tell you what berit means. It cannot by itself tell you how the covenants fit together.

Turn to your Words to study list from the last lesson. Open your passage in STEP Bible or Blue Letter Bible and look for hesed, emet, berit, and the words for compassion and grace, rachum, channun and the verbs related to them. If none of them is in your passage, look in the chapter around it; if none is there, choose the one that best fits your passage's theme and find the nearest place it occurs in the same book.

Take one of these words and trace it with the tool. Use the concordance link to list every place it occurs in the book your passage is in, and write the references down the left-hand side of a new page. Beside each, copy the English word the BSB uses for it. Then mark each line with a letter: L if the verse brings forward loyalty, K if it brings forward kindness, F if it brings forward firmness or reliability, B if a covenant or binding promise is named in the verse or the one before. Some lines will need two letters. If the word is hesed, check that none of your verses is Leviticus 20:17 or Proverbs 14:34, where the same spelling means disgrace.

Now write three sentences at the bottom of the page. First: what the word does in your passage, using the English you would use in a sermon. Second: which English rendering in your notebook you think fits your passage best, and why. Third: one thing you used to say about this word that you would now say differently. Keep the page with your passage notes. You will use it again when you write the final study of your passage.