hesed | a small drop of ink

This is going to sound extremely nerdy,
but I chose a Hebrew word for 2022.

The word is “hesed”.

I did this because I’m setting out to spend a year
on each fruit of the Spirit in my personal study time.

But the fruit of the Spirit is
love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness,gentleness and self-control.
Galatians 5:22

Yep, that’s nine years.
I like to plan ahead.
(Kinda glad self-control is at the end.)

The first fruit for year number one is love; but that seemed too general, too obvious, too broad. One of the ways our word “love” is translated in Old Testament Hebrew is the word “hesed”. Don’t be fooled by its simple appearance. It is long, deep, high and wide. Author Michael Card decided to take a year to write a book on this single word. It took him ten.

Hesed is possibly the most unique word ever uttered. That may sound like an exaggeration, but consider the following: this one Hebrew word is translated into English in over 100 different ways, making it practically untranslatable. There is lots of room to crawl inside and rattle around in this two syllable treasure for a year.

Back in 1535, when Myles Coverdale was working on an English translation of the Bible, he invented a new word to try to capture what “hesed” meant. Lovingkindness. But that doesn’t even come close to covering the depth of this word. Don’t take my word for it. Here is the list* of ways we come across it in our Bibles, compiled by a man who spent 10 years studying one word.