We have looked at two words across the past two articles.
In the Old Testament, we found hesed — the Hebrew word for covenant loyalty, dependable love, the binding commitment God makes to his people and asks from them in return.
In the New Testament, we found pistis — the Greek word for trusting allegiance, faithfulness, the whole-person loyalty that the earliest English translators called "faith."
They look like the same concept in two languages. And they are. But there is a question the first two articles left open: how are they connected?
Today we're going to look at the link between hesed in the Hebrew bible and pistis in the gospels.
The Bridge Between Two Testaments
The connection starts where the Bible starts: in the Hebrew Scriptures.
When God describes himself to Moses on Mount Sinai, he uses two words side by side:
"The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and overflowing with *hesed* and *emeth*."
— Exodus 34:6
Emet means truth, faithfulness, reliability. It comes from the same root as emunah — the Hebrew word for faith, faithfulness, steadfastness.
God's hesed — his covenant loyalty — is a kind of love. What kind of love is it? It is an emunah-kind of love. Faithful. Dependable. True to its word. In other words, emunah is hesed without the dimension of love.
You can see this more clearly in this passage from the psalmist:
"Praise the LORD, all nations! Extol him, all peoples! For great is his *hesed* toward us, and the *emunah* of the LORD endures forever."
— Psalm 117:1–2
Hesed and emunah, together in the same verse. The two belong together. One is the love; the other is the quality that makes it dependable.
The prophet Micah says it the same way:
"You will show *emunah* to Jacob and *hesed* to Abraham, as you have sworn to our fathers from the days of old."
— Micah 7:20
Again, the pair. They are nearly inseparable. Where there is hesed, there is emunah. Where there is emunah, there is hesed.
And the prophet Hosea captures what God wants from his people:
"I desire *hesed*, not sacrifice."
— Hosea 6:6
Not religious performance. Not correct doctrines. Not a sacrifice. Covenant loyalty. A faithful, dependable love.
In the Hebrew Scriptures, hesed and emunah are two sides of the same coin. Hesed simply adds an affection and passion to the idea of commitment.
The Septuagint Split
About two centuries before Jesus, Jewish scholars in Alexandria translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek. The result was the Septuagint.
They faced a problem. Hebrew has hesed and emunah — two words that belong together. Greek has a word to use for emunah, but they had no word to describe hesed with the component of affection or love.
They made a choice:
- Emunah became pistis — the Greek word for faith or trust.
- Hesed became eleos — the Greek word for mercy or compassion.
We don't have notes from the Septuagint translators, but we can assume that this was not a theological decision and simply a necessity of translation. But the connection between them became invisible to anyone reading in Greek and the consequences of that have shaped Christian theology for two thousand years.
Habakkuk 2:4 — The Direct Link
Paul quotes this verse in his own writings, and in doing so he preserves the Hebrew connection.
"Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his *emunah*."
— Habakkuk 2:4
Greek readers of the Septuagint see pistis instead of emunah or faith. "The righteous shall live by his pistis."
As a result, when Paul quotes this verse, he uses the Greek pistis:
"For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed from *pistis* for *pistis*, as it is written, 'The righteous shall live by *pistis*.'"
— Romans 1:17
He quotes the same verse again in Galatians 3:11. The author of Hebrews quotes it in Hebrews 10:38. Every time, the Greek word is pistis — the Septuagint's translation of emunah.
This is the direct, undeniable link between the Hebrew and Greek testaments. The thread is not a theory. It is a quoted verse.
Side note: In a Hebrew version of the Gospel of Matthew that some scholars believe predates the Greek, the word Jesus uses where the Greek has pistis is emunah. "Your emunah has made you well." "O you of little emunah." The link was so clear to the earliest readers that they preserved it in the original language.
What Paul calls "faith" is the emunah of the Hebrew Scriptures. It is not mental belief. It is the same covenant faithfulness, the same steadfast trust, the same whole-life loyalty that Habakkuk spoke of.
How the New Testament Carries the Thread
Once you know the words behind the words, you see the thread everywhere.
Paul quotes Psalm 117 in Romans 15:11:
"Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples extol him."
The context of the psalm is hesed and emunah — "great is his hesed toward us, and the emunah of the LORD endures forever." When Paul calls the Gentiles to praise, he is drawing on the same covenant loyalty that the psalmist celebrated, now extended to all nations.
When Zechariah prophesies in Luke 1:72, he echoes Micah 7:20:
"To show mercy to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant."
The Greek word for "mercy" is eleos — the Septuagint's translation of hesed. Zechariah is declaring that God has remembered his hesed, his covenant loyalty to Abraham.
And Jesus himself quotes Hosea 6:6 twice in the Gospel of Matthew:
"Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy, not sacrifice."
— Matthew 9:13
"If you had known what this means, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the innocent."
— Matthew 12:7
The word Jesus uses — translated as "mercy" — is eleos. And eleos is the Septuagint's translation of hesed. Jesus is quoting Hosea, saying the exact same thing God said through the prophet seven centuries earlier: "I want your covenant loyalty, not your religious rituals."
The Pharisees had all the right doctrines. They kept all the right rules. But they did not have hesed. They did not have emunah. They did not have pistis. They had external religion without internal loyalty.
One Concept
Now we can see the full picture.
The Hebrew word emunah — faithfulness, steadfastness, trustworthiness — is the thread that runs through both testaments.
In the Hebrew Scriptures: Hesed is an emunah-kind of love. God's covenant loyalty is faithful, dependable, true. He is "abundant in hesed and emet" — emet being from the same root as emunah.
In the Greek translation (the Septuagint): Hesed became eleos (mercy) and emunah became pistis (faith). One very similar set of Hebrew words were split into two different Greek words.
In the New Testament: Pistis carries the weight of emunah — not mental belief, but covenant faithfulness. Eleos is forced to carry the weight of hesed — not pity or mercy though, but God's loyal love.
The relationship is two-way. God's hesed is his emunah toward us — faithful covenant love. Our pistis is our emunah toward him — faithful covenant response.
One concept. Two testaments. Three words. A single thread holding the whole story together.
What Was Lost
The most abundant concept in Scripture — appearing nearly 500 times across two testaments — is the concept of covenant faithfulness. A faithful, committed, dependable love that binds two parties together and refuses to let go.
In Hebrew, it is hesed and emunah. In Greek, it is eleos and pistis. In English, it is split across mercy, kindness, lovingkindness, goodness, faith, believe, trust, faithfulness, loyalty, fidelity — a dozen words hiding a single thread.
The average reader of an English Bible will never notice that these words are all pointing to the same thing. The thread is hard to see.
But once you see it, you cannot unsee it.
You will read "mercy" in the Old Testament and remember that it is covenant loyalty.
You will read "faith" in the New Testament and remember that it is trusting allegiance.
You will read through the entire Bible and realize: this is not a book about an angry God in the Old Testament versus a loving God in the New. It is not a book about law versus grace. It is a book about a God who stays loyal to his people and calls them to stay loyal to him.
And a single Hebrew word — emunah — holds both halves together.