Chesed
Chesed
Chesed is a Hebrew word that means 'kindness or love between people', specifically of the devotional piety of people towards God as well as of love or mercy of God towards humanity. It is frequently used in Psalms in the latter sense, where it is traditionally translated as "loving kindness" in English translations.
"God is described over two hundred times in the Old Testament as being "hesed/chesed," a quality God also desires from us: "For I delight in loyalty [hesed] rather than sacrifice" (Hosea 6:6). The Hebrew word hesed is translated as "devoted," "faithful," and "unchanging love."
"Chesed is a covenantal love, a profound and committed and long-term love, a kind love—but not a romantic love. Among people, it can take the form of charity; from God to human, chesed has qualities of mercy, of grace, and of long-suffering. This kind of love so confounded Miles Coverdale, a sixteenth-century Bible translator in England, that as he worked to translate the Hebrew Scriptures into English, he felt compelled to coin a new word to describe it: loving-kindness."
