Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
Psalm 23:6b
Goodness and mercy shall follow me. Mercy is chesed, and mercy is the weakest word for it.
Psalm 23:6, in every translation this tool compares.
She stood by him. That is not kindness, and it is not duty either. It is both at once, and English needs a phrase because it has no noun for it. Some languages have the noun.
Because mercy in that famous line is chesed, the single most important word in the Hebrew Bible for how God relates to people, and mercy is the shade of it that carries least.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.
The King James reads mercy. Modern versions read steadfast love, unfailing love, faithful love, loyal love or covenant loyalty. No two agree, which tells you the word has no English equivalent.
חֶסֶד chesed · H2617
Chesed is loyalty inside a committed relationship: what you owe and also what you freely give, with no line between them. It is the word in Exodus 34:6 where God describes himself, and the Greek behind John's grace and truth. Mercy suggests leniency toward someone in trouble, which is only a corner of it.
English split obligation from affection. Duty is cold, love is warm, and chesed is both in one noun, so every English rendering has to pick a side or use two words.
When you see five different English renderings of one word across five Bibles, stop looking for the right one. The spread is the information.
Mercy is memorable and narrow. Steadfast love is accurate and clumsy. Covenant loyalty is precise and reads like a legal term. The line is quoted at funerals, which is why nobody has been willing to change it.
- Exodus 34:6, rav chesed we-emet, in the self-description of God
- Hosea 6:6, I desired chesed and not sacrifice, quoted at Matthew 9:13
- Septuagint eleos; compare charis kai aletheia at John 1:14
