2 Samuel 24 · Symbol · Mercy
The Words Rachamim, Chesed and Eleos
Rachamim and chesed in Hebrew and eleos in Greek are the words Scripture uses most for mercy, from the Psalms and the prophets to the songs of Luke's Gospel.
The Hebrew noun for God's compassion is spelled with the same letters as the word for a mother's womb.
David answered Gad, “I am deeply distressed. Please, let us fall into the hand of the LORD, for His mercies are great; but do not let me fall into the hands of men.”
- The word
- רַחַם (rachamim), H7356
- First appears
- Genesis 43:14 “May God Almighty grant you mercy before the…”
Summary
Scripture speaks of mercy with several words in Hebrew and in Greek, and each one brings its own picture. The Greek translation of the Old Testament carried the Hebrew words into Greek, so the English word mercy now gathers ideas the original languages keep apart. A reader who knows the words can see which one a verse uses.
- The racham family, a verb, a noun and an adjective, names a compassion felt within the body.
- Chesed, God's loyal love to those bound to Him, is the most frequent of the mercy words.
- When God proclaimed His name at Sinai, He called Himself rachum and abounding in chesed.
- The New Testament's main words for mercy are the noun eleos and its verb eleeo.
- Paul and Peter apply the reversal of the name of Hosea's daughter to the church in two different Greek words.
Scripture's Words for Mercy
The two Testaments use different words for mercy, and the Greek translation of the Old Testament joins them.
Mercy is one of the values Scripture asks of God's people, and its words describe God before they describe us.
This word study asks which words the two Testaments use for mercy and what each one adds. It follows the racham family from the womb to the name God proclaimed at Sinai and keeps chesed to its place beside it. It then traces eleos to the cries of the sick in the Gospels and to Hosea's daughter in Romans and 1 Peter.
Because of the loving devotion of the LORD we are not consumed, for His mercies never fail.The verse is tagged with chesed for the loving devotion of the LORD and with rachamim for His mercies.
But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy,Paul writes that God is rich in eleos, the Greek noun for mercy.
Where the Words Stand
Eight words carry mercy across the two Testaments, and the Hebrew words far outnumber the Greek.
Chesed stands more often than all the other mercy words of the table together.
| Word | Sense in the lexicon | Uses | Books with the most uses | A verse where it stands |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hebrew | ||||
| chesed, חֵסֵד, H2617 | kindness | 247 | Psalms 127, 2 Samuel 12, Genesis 11; 28 books in all | “Because of the loving devotion of the LORD we are not consumed” (Lamentations 3:22) |
| racham, רָחַם, H7355, verb | to have compassion | 47 | Isaiah 12, Jeremiah 10, Hosea 7; 14 books in all | “As a father has compassion on his children” (Psalm 103:13) |
| rachamim, רַחַם, H7356, noun | compassion; womb | 45 | Psalms 11, Nehemiah 5, Isaiah 5; 18 books in all | “for His mercies are great” (2 Samuel 24:14) |
| rechem, רֶחֶם, H7358 | womb | 26 | Job 5, Exodus 4, Numbers 4, Jeremiah 4; 8 books in all | “the LORD had closed her womb” (1 Samuel 1:5) |
| Greek | ||||
| eleeo, ἐλεέω, G1653, verb | to have mercy | 32 | Romans 8, Matthew 8, Luke 4; 10 books in all | “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” (Mark 10:47) |
| eleos, ἔλεος, G1656, noun | mercy | 27 | Luke 6, Romans 3, Matthew 3; 13 books in all | “His mercy extends to those who fear Him” (Luke 1:50) |
| oiktirmos, οἰκτιρμός, G3628 | compassion | 5 | Romans, 2 Corinthians, Philippians, Colossians and Hebrews, one use each | “the Father of compassion” (2 Corinthians 1:3) |
| oiktirmon, οἰκτίρμων, G3629 | compassionate | 3 | Luke 2, James 1 | “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” (Luke 6:36) |
eleeo, ἐλεέω, G1653, verb, eleos, ἔλεος, G1656, noun, oiktirmos, οἰκτιρμός, G3628, oiktirmon, οἰκτίρμων, G3629
The counts are those of the site's tagged Hebrew and Greek text, and a printed concordance may differ by a few. Some verses hold a word twice, so a word's uses can outnumber its verses.
The racham words and eleos book by book3 figures
Isaiah, Jeremiah and Hosea hold 29 of the 47 uses of the verb racham.
The fourteen counts as a table
| Book | Uses |
|---|---|
| Isaiah | 12 |
| Jeremiah | 10 |
| Hosea | 7 |
| Psalms | 5 |
| Exodus | 2 |
| Deuteronomy | 2 |
| Zechariah | 2 |
| 1 Kings | 1 |
| 2 Kings | 1 |
| Proverbs | 1 |
| Lamentations | 1 |
| Ezekiel | 1 |
| Micah | 1 |
| Habakkuk | 1 |
14 bars from zero, one for each book of the Hebrew Bible where the verb racham (H7355) stands, in the order of their counts.
The Psalms hold 11 of the 45 uses of the noun rachamim, more than any other book.
The eighteen counts as a table
| Book | Uses |
|---|---|
| Psalms | 11 |
| Nehemiah | 5 |
| Isaiah | 5 |
| Genesis | 3 |
| Daniel | 3 |
| Judges | 2 |
| 1 Kings | 2 |
| Proverbs | 2 |
| Jeremiah | 2 |
| Zechariah | 2 |
| Deuteronomy | 1 |
| 2 Samuel | 1 |
| 1 Chronicles | 1 |
| 2 Chronicles | 1 |
| Lamentations | 1 |
| Ezekiel | 1 |
| Hosea | 1 |
| Amos | 1 |
18 bars from zero, one for each book of the Hebrew Bible where the noun rachamim (H7356) stands, in the order of their counts.
Luke holds 6 of the 27 uses of the noun eleos, more than any other book.
The thirteen counts as a table
| Book | Uses |
|---|---|
| Luke | 6 |
| Romans | 3 |
| Matthew | 3 |
| 2 Timothy | 3 |
| James | 3 |
| Jude | 2 |
| Galatians | 1 |
| Ephesians | 1 |
| 1 Timothy | 1 |
| Titus | 1 |
| Hebrews | 1 |
| 1 Peter | 1 |
| 2 John | 1 |
13 bars from zero, one for each book of the New Testament where eleos (G1656) stands, in the order of their counts.
Compassion and the Womb
Joseph, a mother before Solomon and the father of Psalm 103 show what the word meant to those who felt it.
The Strong's entry the site's lexicon carries defines rachamim as compassion in the plural, and by extension the womb, as cherishing the fetus. The site's tagging glosses 39 uses of the noun compassion and 6 uses womb, among them Genesis 49:25 and Isaiah 46:3. The ordinary word for the womb, rechem, stands 26 times, once in Exodus 34:19, in the same chapter where God names Himself compassionate.
“Can a woman forget her nursing child, or lack compassion for the son of her womb? Even if she could forget, I will not forget you!The verse sets the verb racham beside beten, the womb, when it asks whether a mother could lack compassion for her own son.
The shared root shows how close the two ideas stood in the language, and each passage shows how near the image of the womb lies in that use.
When David chose to fall into the hand of the LORD, he gave the reason as rachamav, His mercies, with the word for great beside it.
Joseph hurried out because he was moved to tears for his brother, and he went to a private room to weep.The Hebrew says Joseph's rachamim grew warm for his brother Benjamin, and he left the room to weep.
Then the woman whose son was alive spoke to the king because she yearned with compassion for her son. “Please, my lord,” she said, “give her the living baby. Do not kill him!” But the other woman said, “He will be neither mine nor yours. Cut him in two!”The true mother's rachamim grew warm for her son when Solomon ordered the child cut in two.
As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear Him.The psalm uses the verb racham twice, once of a father and once of the LORD.
In Jeremiah 31:20 the LORD speaks of Ephraim with the word for His inward parts and with the verb doubled, in the words My heart yearns for him; I have great compassion for him.
God's love is tenderer than a mother'sJohn Cassian, the Third Conference of Abbot Chaeremon
“This providence and love of God therefore, which the Lord in His unwearied goodness vouchsafes to show us, He compares to the tenderest heart of a kind mother, as He wishes to express it by a figure of human affection, and finds in His creatures no such feeling of love, to which he could better compare it. And He uses this example, because nothing dearer can be found in human nature, saying: ‘Can a mother forget her child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?’”
John Cassian · The Third Conference of Abbot Chaeremon, Chapter 17 · on Isaiah 49:15Patristic
1 Kings 3:26, Psalm 103:13
The Name Proclaimed at Sinai
The Greek translation renders the five terms of the formula with words from four families.
Then the LORD passed in front of Moses and called out: “The LORD, the LORD God, is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion and faithfulness,The verse proclaims the name of the LORD with five qualities, and it is the first place Scripture uses rachum.
The Greek Old Testament renders gracious and abounding in loving devotion with two words of the eleos family.
| Hebrew word | Berean words | Greek word of the Septuagint |
|---|---|---|
| rachum, H7349 | compassionate | oiktirmon |
| channun, H2587 | and gracious | kai eleemon |
| erekh appayim | slow to anger | makrothymos |
| rav chesed, H2617 | abounding in loving devotion | kai polyeleos |
| emet, H571 | and faithfulness | kai alethinos |
Rachum stands 13 times, and every use describes God except Psalm 112:4, which uses it of the righteous man.
Chesed Beside the Mercy Words
The Berean text renders chesed loving devotion, and three other studies teach it at length.
Just over half the uses of chesed stand in the Psalms. Where rachamim names the feeling of compassion, chesed names a faithfulness that keeps its bond.
The Greek Old Testament often renders chesed with eleos, and the word study of chesed and chrestotes sets those verses in a table. The study Hesed, the LORD's Loving Devotion records Norman Snaith's account of how the English word mercy came from the Greek eleos and the Latin misericordia, and the love word study sets chesed beside agape.
Eleos in the New Testament
The sick cry have mercy to Jesus, and Paul quotes Exodus 33:19 with two Greek verbs for mercy.
The noun eleos stands 27 times in 26 verses, and the verb eleeo 32 times in 29 verses. Luke uses the noun five times in his first chapter, four of them in the songs of Mary and Zechariah. In the Gospels the verb is the cry of the blind, the lepers and the parents of the sick, as when Bartimaeus called out to Jesus of Nazareth to have mercy on him.
because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the Dawn will visit us from on high,Zechariah joins splanchna, the inward parts, to eleos, and the Berean text renders the pair the tender mercy of our God.
The second Greek family is smaller. Oiktirmos, compassion or pity, stands five times, and its adjective oiktirmon three times, twice in Luke 6:36 and once in James 5:11. Romans 9:15 quotes Exodus 33:19 with both verbs, the eleos verb for I will have mercy and the oiktirmos verb for I will have compassion.
From No Compassion to Received Mercy
Hosea named a daughter Lo-ruhamah, and the LORD promised to undo the name.
Gomer again conceived and gave birth to a daughter, and the LORD said to Hosea, “Name her Lo-ruhamah, for I will no longer have compassion on the house of Israel, that I should ever forgive them.The daughter's name joins lo, not, to the verb racham, so Lo-ruhamah means no compassion.
And I will sow her as My own in the land, and I will have compassion on ‘No Compassion.’ I will say to those called ‘Not My People,’ ‘You are My people,’ and they will say, ‘You are my God.’”The promise reverses the name given in Hosea 1:6 with the same verb, racham.
Brenton's Greek of Hosea 1:6 names the daughter ouk eleemene, one who was not pitied. His text of the promise reads I will love her that was not loved. The two apostles follow the two readings. Romans 9:25 has the word for beloved, and 1 Peter 2:10 has the eleos verb twice.
Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.Peter writes to believers who once were not a people and now are the people of God.
The story of the prophet's marriage and his children stands on the page Gomer, Bought Back.
The Father of Compassion
Paul calls God the Father of compassion, and Titus 3:5 says He saved His people according to His mercy.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort,Paul uses oiktirmos, compassion, for the God who comforts His people in their trouble.
He saved us, not by the righteous deeds we had done, but according to His mercy, through the washing of new birth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.The verse grounds salvation in God's eleos and sets it against any righteous deeds of our own.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible TBESH and TBESG glosses (Tyndale House, CC BY 4.0), the Brief lexicon based on Abbott-Smith (1922), with the Strong's definitions (1890) the rows carry.
- The word-by-word morphology of the Hebrew and Greek text in the site's database.
- James Strong, The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, with brief dictionaries of the Hebrew and Greek words of the original (1890)
- Lancelot C. L. Brenton, The Septuagint Version of the Old Testament, the Greek text.
- The Words Chesed and Chrestotes, the word study of the kindness family.
- Hesed, the LORD's Loving Devotion, the study of chesed, citing Norman H. Snaith, The Distinctive Ideas of the Old Testament, page 94.
- When God Relents, and the Gracious and Compassionate Formula, the study of Exodus 34:6 to 7.
- John Cassian, Conferences, the Third Conference of Abbot Chaeremon, on Isaiah 49:15.
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