The title belies the subject matter. The word itself is what doesn’t mean anything to me. I liken it to defining a word using the word which is a no-no. Kindness is loving and loving is kindness, right? Why is this a thing for me? Because for 45 years now I’ve been reading NASB77 and lovingkindness is all over that translation like pigeon poop underneath an overpass.
Well, why then did I ever select this translation as my go-to Bible? I first read through the KJV Schofield Study Bible which I had bought at a Bible church I was attending in college. It’s a wonder I didn’t turn out a Millennialist. I read all the notes, but was apparently immune from this heresy.
I wanted a more accurate translation and no commentary, so I got the 1901 American Standard Version which is regarded as the most literal, and wooden, English translation. Most would find the Wycliff translation easier reading. When NASB77 came out, which is a descendant of the AS, I thought, “This is the Bible for me.” It took me years of running into “lovingkindness” before I began feeling unloved by the translation and unkind toward it.
I understood the KJV “tender mercies” (Ps. 25:6), the “bowels of compassion” (I John 3:17), and the “sure mercies of David” (Is. 55:3) which the NASB77 got right: “the faithful mercies shown to David.” I thought when NASB95 came out they might repent the error of their ways. Nope, they kept “lovingkindness” rather than return to the bowels of the word “mercy”. However, gender neutral, NASB2020 did come to their senses. Well not completely or wholeheartedly.
While only 5 English translations have “lovingkindness” in Psalm 136:1, NASB20 doesn’t[i], but they have no mercy either. They have “faithfulness” with a note in the margin saying “mercy”. Sixteen translations have “mercy”; four more along with NASB20 have “faithfulness”; eight have “steadfast love” another fuzzy concept to me. Is unsteadfast love a thing? Is it even love?
Back to the Hebrew word ḥeseḏ. KJV does translate it 30x’s as “lovingkindness”; 40x’s as “kindness” but 149x’s as “mercy”. Of the 30x’s KJV has “lovingkindness” it’s in a verse with “tender mercies” showing that even these translators recognize some distinction.
The problem is the Bible translations use it as one word. Merriam-Webster has it a hyphenated word: loving-kindness. I don’t know if it helps me, but it means something. The first known used of the word was in 1535. Google’s Oxford Languages tells us that the unhyphenated lovingkindness comes from Coverdale’s translation of the Psalms in 1535.
Wikipedia tells me Myles Coverdale starts out Catholic, becomes one of the earlier Anglican reformers, and then goes off the deep end later in life. Wikipedia says he is “regarded as ‘proto-Puritan’ in his later life” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myles_Coverdale). We’re the Puritans known for mercy or lovingkindness (whatever that means)? I think not.
My final rant: Does the condemned man want to hear the judge say, “May God have lovingkindness on your soul”? Do you want the Kyrie to plead, “Lord have lovingkindness upon us; Christ have lovingkindness upon us; Lord have lovingkindness upon us”? Not only do I think not; I know not. Neither do I want the pastor’s call for my Communion thanksgiving to be answered by me with “For His lovingkindness endureth forever.”[ii]
[i] According to blueletterbible.org NASB20 doesn’t have the word “lovingkindness” associated with the Hebrew word in question. NASB95, and I assume NASB77 has it 181x’s. Even my beloved ASV had it 175x’s, but I was too young then to know I didn’t know what lovingkindness meant. The Legacy Standard Bible which is an update of NASB95, defying all logic in my mind, has lovingkindness 239 times! Lord have mercy! (And I mean that.)
[ii] Excursus on Hesed. After much study, I find this may be way beyond my capacity to understand all the intricacies of translating. The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (698a, 699a) provides some interesting insights. (Please understand that a real Hebrew scholar would be laughing up his sleeve at this source.) Nevertheless to continue with it: Up till 1927 translations followed the LXX’s ἔλεος and the Vulgate’s misericordia which both mean “mercy”. In 1927 a German doctoral dissertation by Nelson Glueck, Hesed in the Bible, asserted that Israel was bound to its Deity by covenants like the other nations had. So God’s hesed was not basically mercy but loyalty to His covenant obligations, a loyalty which Israel also should show. The TWOT concluded that Glueck “Seems to find obligation where there is none.” The 1998 Complete Jewish Bible supports this when they translate Psalm 136 repeating of hesed¸ which is ‘mercy’ in KJV, and ‘lovingkindness’ in NASB77, as ‘grace’.
Most followed this “nothing buttery” concept, i.e. that the Old Testament Church relationship with Yahweh really was “nothing but” what pagans had with their deities. [Beware this concept even among “conservative” Lutherans.] In 1949 F. Ascension argued for “mercy” as the translations based on early Old Testament translations having it like the LXX, Vulgate, and others. This is my argument as well.
In 1978 Katharine Sakenfeld in her The Meaning of Hesed in the Hebrew Bible also argued against the idea of obligation: “The help is vital, someone is in a position to help, the helper does so in his own freedom and this is the central figure in all the texts” where hesed is found (45).
Here’s why I conclude I am out of my depth. Vine (Regarding this source see above remark on laughing up one’s sleeve.) says, “The term is one of the most important in the vocabulary of the Old Testament theology and ethics.” The word has three basic meanings “which always interact: strength, steadfastness, and love. Any understanding of the word that fails to suggest all three inevitably loses some of its richness” (142-3). Good ‘luck’ with that as the saying goes. This sounds like a wine bottle label describing the contents as having a note of this, a hint of that, and a lingering of this. Vine, however, is resolute, contra Glueck, that hesed implies personal relationship beyond the rule of law, but notes the most commonly associated Hebrew word associated with hesed is emet, fidelity, reliability.
Finally, if you want even more puzzlement read Isaiah 40:6, “A voice says, ‘Call out.’ Then he answered, ‘What shall I call out?’ All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field.” That is my beloved NASB77. Here’s the KJV: “The voice said, Cry. And he said, ‘What shall I cry?’ All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field:” The word hesed is there. In the NASB 77 it’s translated “loveliness” and in KJV “goodliness”. The LXX translates hesed as glory here. The aforementioned Complete Jewish Bible is more consistent translating ‘all its kindness like wildflowers’.
We don’t know everything about every Hebrew word, but when a word like this shows up so often and is hard for English to get its head around, I’m going with the LXX which was translated in 250 BC and much closer to Biblical Hebrew than we are. So, in short to quote Marvin Gaye in 1971: “mercy, mercy me.”
