Hebrew Bible

The Hebrew Bible is a collection of books about G-d’s relationship with the people of Israel, a relationship characterized by a concept expressed in the Hebrew word chesed, which the JPS usually translates as “steadfast love,” “kindness,” or “loyalty.” This theme of G-d’s steadfast love courses through the entirety of the Hebrew Bible and is one of the main elements that binds together all its disparate genres and styles. Chesed has a more particular set of meanings than the English words “love” or “kindness” do, especially when applied as an attribute of G-d. In older English translations, it was often rendered as the portmanteau “lovingkindness.” This indicates that the term conceives of love not primarily as an affective emotion or an inner state of one’s own feelings but as an active virtue that reaches out to practical effect in others’ lives. It also carries overtones of faithfulness and loyalty, and thus some modern English translations render it as “faithful love” or “covenant love.” Essentially, it is an active expression of love in the context of an established relationship of complete commitment between two parties. It carries with it a sense of mutual obligation and a binding of honor and loyalty to another person, which is expressed in perpetually seeking the other’s good.

While chesed was a normal cultural way of thinking about human relationships, especially within the bonds of families, one of the Hebrew Bible’s most dramatic contributions to theology was to express the divine-human relationship in terms of chesed. G-d commits to covenant relationships of mutual affection and obligation with human beings, even though the divine prerogative would not require G-d to do so. This act of love reflects G-d’s desire to enter into these relationships—G-d chooses to love, and not merely out of obligation: In the words of Deuteronomy 7.7, “[T]he L-rd set His heart on you and chose you.” Further, G-d commits not only to affection or kindness toward his people but also to an ongoing promise to continue loving them, no matter what may happen in the future. This element, of the ongoing surety of G-d’s commitment to love, is shown in the JPS’s occasional rendering of chesed as “loyalty” or as “steadfast love.” G-d’s chesed toward the Israelites even goes further than most human relationships were expected to go. While there is a sense of mutual obligation in both the divine-human and the human-human relationships of chesed, the Hebrew Bible regularly expresses G-d’s intention to maintain chesed toward Israel even if Israel does not remain faithful to him: “For the mountains may move and the hills be shaken, but My loyalty shall never move from you, nor My covenant of friendship be shaken” (Isaiah 54.10). In what is one of the most often-repeated refrains in the whole Hebrew Bible, this theme of G-d’s unchanging, steadfast love is affirmed: “For the L-rd is good; His steadfast love is eternal” (Psalm 100.5; see also 1 Chronicles 16.34; 2 Chronicles 5.13, 7.3, 20.21; Ezra 3.11; Psalms 106.1, 107.1; and Jeremiah 33.11). 

The steadfast love of G-d is a theme that runs throughout the Hebrew Bible, and it is seen most dramatically in the recurring narratives of Israel’s rebellions and failures to live up to the standards of G-d’s covenant-law. From the moment G-d delivers his law to Moses until the very end of the Hebrew Bible, the Israelites are locked in tragic cycles of rebellion, disobedience, and tepidity in their faith. These failures to live faithfully run throughout all the historical books, leading to social and political catastrophes like the Assyrian and Babylonian invasions, and they also form the background content for most of the pleading rebukes delivered by the prophets. Yet, despite Israel’s waywardness, the faithfulness of G-d does not waver. G-d may allow Israel to live with the consequences of their sins and even chasten them with judgments to urge them back to the right way, but G-d’s loyal love for them is never revoked. Over and over again, G-d plays the role of redeemer, drawing the people back even after all their rebellions, thus underscoring the unchanging nature of the divine chesed. 

Ultimately, though, this tragic story arc of Israel’s unfaithfulness shows some glimmers of healing and restoration by the end of the Hebrew Bible. Whereas during the earlier monarchical period, the Israelites often neglected the worship of G-d in favor of the pagan gods of their neighbors, after the exile in Babylon, a new commitment to purity of worship and faithfulness to the law develops among the Jewish returnees. Led by figures like Ezra and Nehemiah, Jewish society reaches a point of responding to G-d’s chesed with a renewed zeal to uphold their own end of the covenant-commitment. This renewed commitment played out in subsequent Jewish history, as seen in the Maccabean movement in the second century BCE and the development of several influential sects who were passionately committed to following the law of Moses during the Second Temple period. These included the Essenes, Sadducees, and Pharisees (from whose roots the later rabbinic movements would emerge), all of whom expressed a renewed zeal for responding to G-d’s chesed in faithfulness, loyalty, and deep devotion. In later Jewish tradition, chesed was reckoned one of the 10 Sefirot on the kabbalistic Tree of Life and one of the highest virtues in Jewish musar literature (ethical instruction).