Introduction / Glossary
We’ll start by establishing a shared vocabulary. I will take you on a tour of the key words used in the original languages, and then I will provide working English definitions which we will use going forward. This glossary gets us started. When appropriate, we will dig deeper into these terms as we progress through the book. The Hebrew and Greek terms for this principle are variously rendered into English as mercy, grace, love, kindness, lovingkindness, goodness, compassion, favor, pity, sympathy, loyalty, righteousness, justice and a handful of others. The non-English terms in the following chart represent a family of words. For example, chêsêd is a noun, châsad is a verb, châsı̂yd is an adjective, etc. For simplicity’s sake, I will use one term from each family to represent the whole family of words. When greater precision is warranted, I will embed a reference number in the Scripture quotation, like so: Have mercy[5] on me, O God, according to Your unfailing love;[1] according t