Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Chesed
Summary
Chesed (חֶסֶד, also Romanized: Ḥeseḏ) 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.
In Jewish theology it is likewise used of God's love for the Children of Israel, and in Jewish ethics it is used for love or charity between people. Chesed in this latter sense of 'charity' is considered a virtue on its own, and also for its contribution to tikkun olam (repairing the world). It is also considered the foundation of many religious commandments practiced by traditional Jews, especially interpersonal commandments.
Chesed is also one of the ten Sephirot on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. It is given the association of kindness and love, and is the first of the emotive attributes of the sephirot.
The root chasad has a primary meaning of 'eager and ardent desire', used both in the sense 'good, kind' and 'shame, contempt'. The noun chesed inherits both senses, on one hand 'zeal, love, kindness towards someone' and on the other 'zeal, ardour against someone; envy, reproach'. In its positive is used of mutual benevolence, mercy or pity between people, of devotional piety of people towards God, as well as the grace, favour or mercy of God towards people.
It occurs 248 times in the Hebrew Bible. In the majority of cases (149 times), the King James Bible (KJV) translation is mercy, following the Septuagint (LXX) eleos. Less frequent translations are: kindness (40 times), lovingkindness (30 times), goodness (12 times), kindly (five times), merciful (four times), favour (three times) and good, goodliness, pity (once each).
Only two instances of the noun in its negative sense are in the text, translated reproach in Proverbs 14:34, and wicked thing in Leviticus 20:17.
The translation of loving kindness in KJV is derived from the Coverdale Bible of 1535.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.