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A Korean Primer for and Perspective on Ḥesed

I am Korean. That means tragic tears flow in my veins—even when I am elated and laughing. Tragic is the basic key in which the music of life is played; to be Korean means to know pathos as ethos. As a child in Korea, I was weaned on moving stories of parental sacrifice and heroic tales of filial duty, which usually involve tragic, ennobled suffering that forms and informs the proper Korean ethical posture—this holds true for all human relationships, not just the parent-child. Passion is ethics; ethics demands honorable self-denial that often leads to unspoken suffering. Stoic tears as well as the profound absence of tears signifying ineffable, inconsolable sorrow are as familiar a Korean currency as disconsolate moans and ear-splitting, heart-rending, gut-wrenching wails.

For Korean pathos-ethos, willful suffering and self-sacrifice constitute the essential Korean assay of true love and of authentic expressions of love. For example, the Korean word for filial piety is hyo (효 = devotion, duty, or love toward a parent), behind which is the Chinese character hyo (孝), an ideogram of a son jah (子 in Chinese) carrying an old person noh (老 in Chinese) on his back: 老 (noh) on top of 子 (jah) equals 孝 (hyo). Experiencing Korean pathos-ethos in the relationships of people I know, I knew that love—true love—meant suffering more than smiles. Furthermore, as much as my parents love each other and me—i.e., they sacrificed greatly for each other and for me—I have yet to hear them say “I love you” to each other or to me. I am Korean enough not to expect otherwise and not to misunderstand the silence. Despite recent, mainly media-driven exceptions to the Korean tradition, “I love you” is still not at home on most Korean lips, certainly not for parents and children, and still rare between spouses. In the Korean vernacular of pathos-ethos, deep love is action (or inaction), usually involving self-sacrifice, and not an uttered proposition or declaration. Love is not so much a feeling as volition and action. One does not say it; one does it—an interesting point of comparison when considering the semantic dimensions of ḥesed in the Bible, which appears always as a noun, never a verb; ḥesed refers to specific things one party does for another.*

When Koreans do speak of the quality of personal relationships, especially regarding what many languages would call love, they would likely use the word jung (정 in Korean), a word that cannot—should not?—be translated, yet an indispensible word that points to how Koreans experience personal relationships. When dictionaries attempt to translate jung into English, they offer the following possibilities: love, affection, attachment, devotion, loyalty, tender feeling, tender sentiment, friendly sentiment, emotion, sentimentality, intimacy, heart, kindheartedness, warmheartedness, tenderheartedness, softheartedness, friendliness, fondness, compassion, sympathy, pity. Of course, Koreans simply experience and know jung as jung and use the word without explanation.

In like manner, the pitfalls of apprehending the Hebrew word ḥesed (חסד ) with one English word would justify leaving it untranslated in the Bible—a case that I would make also about the Greek word logos (λόγος) in John 1:1–18, usually translated Word. Ḥesed is famously difficult to translate into English, and any translation of ḥesed belies its richness and texture; the same is true of jung. At the same time, the untranslatability of ḥesed, as also in the case of the Korean jung, bespeaks its nuanced depth in expressing the richness of experiences of both divine and human beneficence.

Grasping an Elusive, Untranslatable Word

In terms of English translation possibilities, there is a notable similarity between ḥesed and jung not only in the difficulty of their translation but also in their semantic domains. Although ḥesed is not the same as jung and neither is a translation of the other, one can illuminate the other with regard to experiences of benevolence and beneficence. While ḥesed is limited neither to the Hebrew Bible nor to experiences of Jews and Christians alone, it does express a characteristic understanding of God’s relationship with the covenant people, both communally and individually.

Of the 249 occurrences of ḥesed in the Old Testament, 129 are found in the Psalms, in which the King James Version renders it most often as mercy and also as lovingkindness, goodness, merciful kindness, or simply kindness, usually expressing God’s beneficence toward Israel. Perhaps most familiar is the refrain in Ps. 136: “for his mercy endureth for ever” (KJV). That same refrain can sound a bit different in other translations:

Besides divine beneficence, ḥesed can also denote what one human being does for another, whether in close relationship (e.g., family: Sarah’s ḥesed toward Abraham in Gen. 20.13) or more formal relationship (e.g., political: David’s ḥesed toward the Ammonite king Hanun in 2 Sam. 10.1–2a). In human relationships ḥesed refers generally to benevolence and beneficence as demonstrated through voluntary acts of kindness or loyalty in critical situations where one party needs, not just desires, the help or favor from another who is uniquely able to offer it because of particular circumstances, not social or political position (e.g., Sarah’s ḥesed to help Abraham survive). As such, ḥesed accentuates the voluntary commitment of one party to the other in critical need. Even so, ḥesed can refer also to what Israel should do for God (e.g., Hosea 10.12a).

Various biblical examples of ḥesed in human relationships illuminate how and why it became central for expressing the experience of God’s covenant relationship with Israel, one that was characterized by God’s voluntary commitment and faithful providence. Divine ḥesed can be unconditional or irrevocable, accentuating God’s free and eternally reliable commitment independent of human failure in commitment and obedience—this is a feature most evident in the covenant relationship with David (e.g., 2 Sam. 7; Ps. 89; cf. perpetual covenant with Abraham). Divine acts of ḥesed can also be conditional, most typically in the Mosaic covenant tradition. Since God’s ḥesed can depend on Israel’s faithfulness (Exod. 20.5b–6) it can be withdrawn because of Israel’s disobedience (Jer. 16.5b), divine ḥesed also includes forgiveness (e.g., Exod. 34.6b–7), a characteristic never attested in secular, human contexts of ḥesed, e.g., Abraham and Abimelech (Gen. 21.23).

It is significant to note that ḥesed is used in connection with only persons—never things—who are already in some mutual relationship. Referring generally to specific actions, although it may, by extension, refer to attitudes, ḥesed carries positive, desirable connotations. Central to understanding ḥesed is the relationship itself in which a good thing is done, given, received, and acknowledged. This fundamental apprehension of ḥesed’s relational focus sheds light on what I consider to be the heart of Christian life regarding covenantal love: ḥesed is not about feelings or declarations of feelings but about intentional and enacted commitment. It is to this dimension of ḥesed to which we now turn.

Ḥesed, Love in 1 Corinthians 13, and Wedding Vows

The word love is not equivalent to ḥesed, but the two can shed some light on each other. All of us have experienced love in its various forms: love of parents, love between friends, love between a man and a woman, love of country, love of God, love of chocolate. But because of its various dimensions and uses, the meaning of the word love has become fuzzy. We say, “I love this place!” or “I love what you did with your hair!” In such conversational uses, love is no more than an expression of personal approval or enthusiasm: “I love that!” basically means “I like that a lot!” or “I think that’s great!” These expressions are generally oriented to the speaker’s feeling. Nevertheless, even in the conventional use of the word love, it is essentially verbal, not some-thing to possess, feel or fall into; it is human activity, something human beings do.

When it comes to love, there is no better known biblical text than 1 Corinthians 13, a chapter peculiarly devoted only to love (ἀγάπη, agapē)—there is no mention of God, Christ, or the Holy Spirit as in the surrounding context. It is clear by what and how Paul writes, especially in the contentious situation of the church in Corinth, that he wanted the Corinthians to love one another and that their love should have nothing to do with how they feel; love for Paul—and I would argue in most, if not all, of the Bible—is about the will, the decision, and intention of a person or group.

Accordingly, as much as the so-called “love chapter” has been used in wedding ceremonies, it is quite appropriate for couples vowing to love each other (for as long as they both live) not because of how they feel but because of what they promise to do—Paul does not say, “If you feel like loving each other, . . .” It is also fortunate that the word covenant, almost never used today, is often heard in wedding services to remind us of the voluntary commitment necessary for covenantal love. The covenant vow couples make publicly before God and witnesses is to be loving and faithful, in plenty and in want, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health. As in 1 Corinthians 13, the marital-covenant vow is a matter of the human will; marital love is not so much something we feel but rather something we are called to work on and build up. Corinthian Christians are, according to Paul, obligated to work at loving; likewise, spouses are bound by their vows to work at loving each other. Marital love is what spouses promise to do.

Similar to the way that jung in Korean culture is experienced primarily through what someone does—i.e., not through mere declaration of someone’s feelings—love, as Paul articulates it in 1 Corinthians 13, and ḥesed in the Hebrew Bible are not matters of feeling, but of willful commitment. Just as the covenant vows between God and Israel had to do with what each vowed to do for the other, marital covenant vows articulate not love felt but love done or given with faithfulness. It makes all the sense in the world that Israel expressed its experience of God’s ḥesed in terms of the faithful love of a husband toward his (unfaithful) wife, e.g., Isa 54.5; Jer 3.20, 31.32; Hos 2.16–20. As elusive as it is for translation, ḥesed is appropriate for the mystery of God’s covenant relationship with Israel that is firm and steadfast while also as free to surprise human expectations and elude small human conceptions, no matter in what language, place, or time. In a world that is all too often broken by chaos, disorder, disappointment, fear, hatred, and suffering, God’s act of ḥesed for us in the incarnate and crucified Christ may defy language—theology will always fall short—but its mystery continues to be at the heart of our understanding of and relationship with God.

Notes

* See the Anchor Bible Dictionary for this and other details in this article about the biblical use of ḥesed.

About the author

Kang-Yup Na wrote 2 articles for this publication.

Kang Na is an associate professor in the Department of Religion, History, Philosophy, and Classics at Westminster College (New Wilmington, Pa.). His area of specialty is the New Testament and hermeneutics. Born to first-generation Christian parents in South Korea, he has lived, studied, taught, and served churches in various places in Nashville, New Jersey, Korea, Atlanta, Germany, and New York City. He earned an AB at Princeton University, an MDiv at Princeton Theological Seminary, and a PhD in New Testament from Emory University. He is also an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA).

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