The Ḥesed of God, Part 1: Hope and Joy in the Midst of Despair

Hesed.

Hesed is a rich Hebrew word and unfortunately it is extremely challenging to find a word that even comes close in English. The closest our Bibles come to is steadfast love, lovingkindness, or mercy. Yet even these fall short.

Hesed is viewed as God’s covenantal, loyal and enduring love for his people, a love that pursues his people when they have done nothing but reject him (think the Israelites in the wilderness). It’s a covenantal loyalty that is unwavering and not based upon the condition of its recipients, but on the character of the one giving that love.

Psalms 31 and 32 are key in understanding the relationship between God’s covenantal love towards us in our brokenness and his forgiveness of our sin. In both suffering and sin, God’s hesed is consistent, unfading, and imperishable. God’s hesed is stable. It’s a refuge for our hearts when we are in despair and encourages joy in God in his forgiveness of our sin.

Part one of this small series will focus on Psalm 31 (Hope and joy in the midst of despair) and part two will focus on Psalm 32 (The grace of forgiveness).

Psalm 31: Hesed in the Midst of Despair

This Psalm initially finds David in grief and crying out begging for God to hear, to be near, and to not forget him. This is David’s lament. He feels as if God has abandoned him and is fearful of his captors.

The turning point comes in verse seven where David rejoices in the hesed of God.

“I will rejoice and be glad in Your lovingkindness (hesed), because You have seen my affliction…”

David draws a strong connection between God’s hesed and God knowing the troubles of his soul. Just as hesed points to God’s covenant faithfulness it also points to his omniscience – his full knowledge of the pain each individual is walking through. This was reason for David to rejoice. He echoes this later in verse 21.

“Blessed be the LORD, for He has made marvelous His lovingkindness (hesed) to me in a besieged city.”

David rejoices in God’s hesed - his loyal, covenantal love. God has seen and understood David’s suffering and David finds comfort and joy in the midst of his pain knowing that God’s steadfast love is not distant but deeply present.

The All-Knowing Covenantal God

It’s no secret to anyone that life is hard. This world is cursed. It is painful to live here.

Despite this curse, as believers, we have been given God’s hesed. His unwavering loyalty and commitment. And God is deeply aware of your suffering and my suffering. He is deeply personal and cares for each member of his flock.

Not only is God deeply aware of our suffering, but he experienced this suffering far more than we will ever have to endure.

Why?

Because of hesed.

“Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried;

Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted” (Isaiah 53:4).

Because of God’s loyal and covenant-keeping love for his people, He sent his Son to die on a tree so that we might experience reconciliation with the Father and be brought into the fold of His covenant-keeping love - just as Christ is in this fold.

This is reason to rejoice in trials: We are recipients of God’s beautiful hesed through the death of Jesus. And because we are recipients of this hesed, we are never alone in any pain.

Brittany Proffitt lives in North Texas and is a writer and content manager for So We Speak.