Hesed, Love and Loyalty

The Hebrew language is rich with many words and concepts that do not carry over directly into English and so must be translated with a variety of English words or phrases.  One word that does not immediately translate into English is the word hesed.  It translates into Greek roughly as agape.  In various places it is translated as "love", "care", "loyalty."  Robert Hubbard argues that hesed is the theme of the book of Ruth.

חֶסֶד

In the Psalms, this word is often translated "lovingkindness".

Hesed

According to this Wikipedia article on hesed, the word occurs 248 times in the Hebrew Bible, often translated as mercy, kindness, lovingkindness or goodness.  Because of the word's association with ardor or desire, twice it is translated as a negative quality, in Proverbs 14: 34, where the NIV uses "condemns", and Leviticus 20: 17, where the NIV says "disgrace".  (The Hebrew interlinear text of these verses here and here.) But the word does not just mean kindness; it has a covenantal aspect, a concept that includes commitment, longterm obligation. A Strong's Concordance summary of the various Hebrew aspects of the word is here.

The Wikipedia article goes on to say

A person who embodies chesed is known as a chasid (hasid, חסיד), one who is faithful to the covenant and who goes "above and beyond that which is normally required" and a number of groups throughout Jewish history which focus on going "above and beyond" have called themselves chasidim. These groups include the Hasideans of the Second Temple period, the Maimonidean Hasidim of medieval Egypt and Palestine, the Chassidei Ashkenaz in medieval Europe, and the Hasidic movement which emerged in eighteenth century Eastern Europe.

In an earlier post, I recommended Sarah Fisher's blog on Hebrew words. In this blog is a post, Khesed: Royal Love in Action, where she writes

Khesed has a complicated translation history. It has confounded a lot of scholars and English translators and because of that, it has a wide range of translations.... It  is a unique-to-Hebrew word. 

I recommend the blogpost by Fisher.

The BibleStudyTools website has an article on hesed. Singer-songwriter Michael Card has written a book on Hesed, Inexpressible and a blog post explaining his love affair with this word.

With the covenantal aspect to this word, one would hope that we would have marriages full of hesed, involving affection and loyalty, with both ardor and commitment!