One reason that I did not initially discover the covenant in the Scripture was that the word “covenant” is not to be found very often. It was the discovery of another word that led me right into the heart of the covenant. That word in the Hebrew language is hesed;1 it is the word of the covenant in Scripture.
The word is translated in our various versions of the Bible in a number of different ways. In our older versions of the Bible, it is translated as “mercy,” and we will explain why below. The modern versions attempt to get to the heart of its meaning as the word of the covenant, translating it as “steadfast love,” “covenant love,” “unfailing love,” or simply “loyalty.”
The word is found approximately 250 times in the Hebrew Old Testament and probably ranks among one of the most important words of the covenant. It is a word rich with meaning, but at its heart it describes the mutual responsibilities that each party to a covenant has to the other, and the rights that each enjoys in the covenant relationship. This is daily lived out in mundane tasks, as well as in self-sacrificing decisions that sometimes have to be made in order to carry out the covenant blessings and promises given to each other at the making of the covenant.
Hesed is the word that describes the working out of the expressions of love that were potential in the original covenant commitment. Hesed describes the relationship of the covenant partners, but more, it describes that relationship being worked out; it is the covenant in action. So when Scripture is speaking of God’s lovingkindness, it is often in the context of His doing and showing and keeping the covenant when every word that has been sworn to is put to the test. “Lovingkindness” is the word that describes the covenant when it takes to the streets and simply does it every day. It is God’s keeping every word and giving every blessing He has promised.
The word has three ideas that must be present in order to fully grasp its meaning. The three ideas are strength, steadfastness, and love, each to be understood in the context of a covenant’s having been made. If we have only one of these ideas, the word will lose its meaning. If we emphasize love to the exclusion of strength and steadfastness, it will tend toward the romantic and sentimental and lack the vital element of commitment. If we leave out love and emphasize strength and steadfastness, we will be left with a cold, legal faithfulness to the covenant and the ability to perform it, without passion or desire to do so. But at the heart of hesed are love, warmhearted generosity, and goodness, not merely loyalty and legal obligation.
Hesed is a word that is often related to marriage, and that is certainly a legal matter attended with solemn vows and the taking of obligations and responsibilities. Yet at the heart of the relationship is committed love that transcends the legalities even as it fulfills them. With that in mind, maybe the word “devotion” is a better translation.
The word hesed was used by the Hebrews to describe the ideal family love, the love that binds people together relation-ally. In seeking to understand its meaning, we must include all the elements of belonging to a circle of love, of mutual caring, of providing and protecting love. It carries with it the assurance that the other party to the covenant will be there in the day of need or trouble.
To emphasize the idea of the steadfastness of the relationship, hesed is often linked with faithfulness in the Scripture. Behind His hesed is His faithfulness, a word that means that God is infinitely reliable and can be counted on at all times; He is constant and unchangeable. It arises directly from the covenant oath of God, which is the foundation of our faith.
Your mercy (hesed), O LORD, is in the heavens; Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.
Psalm 36:5
It is good to give thanks to the LORD, And to sing praises to Your name, O Most High; To declare Your lovingkindness in the morning, And Your faithfulness every night.
Psalm 92:1,2
I have not hidden Your righteousness within my heart; I have declared Your faithfulness and Your salvation; I have not concealed Your lovingkindness and Your truth From the great assembly. Do not withhold Your tender mercies from me, O LORD; Let Your lovingkindness (or faithfulness) and Your truth continually preserve me.
Psalm 40:10,11
God Is Hesed
When humans make a covenant oath, it is in order to create the bond of lovingkindness and to hold it in place. But we must understand that God makes covenant with humans not to lock Himself in to acting in love toward us lest He should be tempted to fail in so doing! He makes covenant not to create lovingkindness, but in order that we might see that His heart is lovingkindness from eternity.
And the LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD God, merciful (hesed) and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth.”
Exodus 34:6
But You are God, Ready to pardon, Gracious and merciful (hesed), Slow to anger, Abundant in kindness, And did not forsake them.
Nehemiah 9:17
The LORD is merciful (hesed) and gracious, Slow to anger, and abounding in mercy.
Psalm 103:8
So he prayed to the LORD, and said, “Ah, LORD, was not this what I said when I was still in my country? Therefore I fled previously to Tarshish; for I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness (hesed), One who relents from doing harm.
Jonah 4:2
“Therefore know that the LORD your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy (hesed) for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments;
Deuteronomy 7:9
Our very existence arises from His hesed. Psalm 136 states that the creation and the laws that cause the universe to continue arise from His lovingkindness, here translated as mercy:
To Him who by wisdom made the heavens, For His mercy endures forever; To Him who laid out the earth above the waters, For His mercy endures forever; To Him who made great lights, For His mercy endures forever—The sun to rule by day, For His mercy endures forever; The moon and stars to rule by night, For His mercy endures forever.
Psalm 136:5-9
The entire history of Israel, the people of God of the Old Testament, in their relationship to God is summed up in this word. Whatever they are going through, whether they are at the high peak of walking with Him or plunging into the depths of sin in their turning away from Him, always there is the presence of His lovingkindness delighting and yearning over the covenant people. His continual unfailing presence with His people to achieve His purpose is at the heart of this word hesed. When this word is understood, the Psalms are seen as the delighted response to covenant love. The Prophets come alive as covenant documents addressed by God to His people. The history of Old Testament Israel is of His lovingkindness meeting the need of His people for redemption from sin, their enemies, and troubled times.
Because He is hesed and is not bound to it only because of a covenant’s being made, His covenant love is greater than the covenant. It explains when the human breaks covenant that His heart of lovingkindness still reaches after them and will not let them go.
With a little wrath I hid My face from you for a moment; But with everlasting kindness I will have mercy on you,” Says the LORD, your Redeemer.
For the mountains shall depart And the hills be removed, But My kindness shall not depart from you, Nor shall My covenant of peace be removed,” Says the LORD, who has mercy on you.
Isaiah 54:8,10
Even after Jerusalem fell and the people were led away captive to Babylon because of their many sins, Jeremiah could find peace in the covenant loyalty of God to His wayward people.
Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness.
Lamentations 3:22,23
When David committed adultery with Bathsheba and then arranged for her husband to be killed in battle, he knew that there was no forgiveness under the Law of Moses, which stated that he must be stoned to death. He appealed beyond the law to the
covenant heart of God:
Have mercy hesed upon me, O God, According to Your lovingkindness; According to the multitude of Your tender mercies, Blot out my transgressions.
Psalm 51:1
We may sum up the covenant love of God in the Old Testament by saying that it is the eternal covenant love of God committed to keep every word of His covenant promises. It is seen in His commitment to be there for us, His covenant people, every day and every hour to save, keep, protect, and care for us. Hesed tells us that God passionately loves us, longs for us, and pursues us even when we walk away from Him.
The Story of Gibeon
Perhaps one of the most amazing stories in the Bible, the story of Gibeon illustrates the strength and steadfastness of covenant love, or hesed. The story is found in chapters 9 and 10 of the book of Joshua.
Joshua had led Israel into Canaan, the land of promise, to conquer and take it as their homeland. The people who then lived there were idolaters practicing vile immoral acts as part of their worship of their false deities, and the command of God was plain: His people were to have no treaties or covenants with the inhabitants of Canaan.
One of the Canaanite tribes, the Gibeonites decided to trick the leaders of Israel into entering into a binding covenant with them. They were only a few hours from where Joshua was camped, but they put on worn and ragged clothes and sandals that were falling apart and put crumbling and moldy bread in their packs. They arrived at Joshua’s tent looking as if they had traveled many miles over a period of weeks.
They sat and told the elders of Israel that they had come from a land far away and had traveled the great distance because they had heard of the wonders God had done for the Israelites in Egypt and in their trek through the wilderness to Canaan. They presented themselves as the representatives of their people who desired to enter into covenant with such a God-blessed people.
Foolishly, the elders of Israel, although suspicious, did not check out the story the Gibeonites told, and most foolishly they did not consult with God. They were gullible and believed every word the men of Gibeon told them and entered into covenant with them, invoking the Lord with a solemn covenant oath.
So Joshua made peace with them, and made a covenant with them to let them live; and the rulers of the congregation swore to them.
Joshua 9:15
The fact that Israel was in covenant with God made the Gibeonites not only partners with Israel, but also with their God. With beaming smiles and great inner rejoicing, the men of Gibeon left the following day to trek a few miles over the hills to their people with the great news. They had pulled it off! They were in covenant on the basis of a lie that the leaders of Israel had never bothered to check out.
But three days later, Israel discovered the truth that the Gibeonites were their neighbors. What would Israel do? The leaders realized that they had been deceived and, worse, had involved themselves and God in a covenant with a people that God had expected them to subjugate.
They confronted the Gibeonites. Here we face the unchangeable nature of hesed. How would they treat these liars who were their sworn enemies but now, by false testimony, were in covenant with them? The leaders of Israel knew that they could not go back on their covenant oath, even though there was complaint against the leadership from the people. Hesed held, and they spared the people of Gibeon.
But the children of Israel did not attack them, because the rulers of the congregation had sworn to them by the LORD God of Israel. And all the congregation complained against the rulers. Then all the rulers said to all the congregation, “We have sworn to them by the LORD God of Israel; now therefore, we may not touch them.
Joshua 9:18,19
They punished their deceitfulness by making them the servants of Israel, specifically servants to the priests and Levites, but the covenant oath was honored.
It was not long before the surrounding tribes heard of the deceitful union with powerful Israel that the tribe of Gibeon had brought about. They were angry with them, not because they had deceived Israel but because they had betrayed them, their Canaanite brothers. Five Canaanite tribes united to attack the hopelessly outnumbered Gibeonites.
The elders of Gibeon sent an urgent message to their covenant partner Israel and, through them, to the God of Israel. They were, in fact, calling upon hesed: “Help! Your covenant partners are being attacked, and you are covenant-bound to fulfill hesed and come and help us.”
The steadfast covenant love of God, even to such deceitful liars, never shows up better than in this little story. God gave His full blessing to Joshua to go and defend those who were now His covenant partners. He promised Joshua that the five Canaanite tribes would fall before him.
And the LORD said to Joshua, “Do not fear them, for I have delivered them into your hand; not a man of them shall stand before you.”
Joshua 10:8
Not only so, but He granted the greatest miracle recorded in Scripture outside of the resurrection: The sun stood still, giving Joshua the necessary time to defend the Gibeonites!
Then Joshua spoke to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel: “Sun, stand still over Gibeon; And Moon, in the Valley of Aijalon.” So the sun stood still, And the moon stopped, Till the people had revenge Upon their enemies...So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day. And there has been no day like that, before it or after it, that the LORD heeded the voice of a man; for the LORD fought for Israel.
Joshua 10:12-14
There is never a time when God will not honor His hesed, even if made under false pretenses! How much more will God honor the covenant formed in the eternal mind of God, executed by His Son, and brought to us by the Holy Spirit?
This brings a new meaning to Hebrews 13:5: For He Himself has said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." Wonderful as these words are, the original language conveys a description of covenant commitment that is very difficult to put into English. The Amplified Bible catches the sense of it:
For He [God] Himself has said, I will not in any way fail you nor give you up nor leave you without support. [I will] not, [I will] not, [I will] not in any degree leave you helpless nor forsake nor let [you] down (relax My hold on you)! [Assuredly not!]
Hebrews 13:5
It takes five negatives in English to give the assurance that is conveyed in this verse that He will never leave us under any conditions! This is the covenant lovingkindness of God.
Hesed as Mercy
But why do the older translations consistently translate this word into the English “mercy”?
We noted in our last chapter that the covenants that God makes with us, finalizing in the ultimate new covenant, are unequal covenants.
We have many examples of unequal covenants from secular history. A conquering king would offer to enter into covenant with the conquered king and people both as an act of generosity and as a means of governing his new province. An example in Scripture is of Nebuchadnezzar, the conquering king of Babylon, entering into covenant with the conquered king of Judah, Zedekiah. At other times, the weaker person or tribe would seek the protection and patronage of a stronger person or tribe by asking for covenant.
The inequality of the covenants of God brings the mind to silence and worship. It is not a great, generous human king who offers covenant relationship; for, although unequal in their position in life, they are equal as being two human beings. But God the Creator enters into covenant with His creature men and women! This is not an equal partnership that is brought about by both parties’ making their contribution. It is God’s giving His all to men and women, who neither deserve it nor have anything to offer.
The Gospel of the covenant is presented by God to man not as a point to begin negotiations, but for humans to accept or reject. Love has accomplished the incredible, and all humans can do is either receive with thanks or establish themselves in their rebellion forever by refusin
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God’s act of initiating covenant and then His fulfilling of every promise made in the covenant is an act of grace and mercy renewed every day. It is with this in mind that the translators chose the word “mercy” for the Hebrew hesed. The very thought of covenant love from God could only be translated in terms of mercy (which means that we do not get from God what we deserve) and grace (which means that we get from Him what we do not deserve)!
There was no pressure on God to seek after humans when they had freely chosen to sever themselves from Him. We must never forget that God freely chose to save us. There was no demand placed upon Him to do so from outside of Him, nor was there an incompleteness within Him that He needed humans to fill. Complete in Himself, He chose to save us out of sheer love. His covenant is a unilateral covenant originated in the mind of God before time, initiated and achieved by God alone. The only reason behind His desire to make such a covenant, to bring sinful humans into a relationship at infinite cost to Himself, is His unconditional love for us.
Power of the Blood Covenant: Uncover the Secret Strength of God's Eternal Oath Page 5
