# What Is Mercy in the Bible? God’s Compassion, in Hebrew and Greek

Source: https://christianpure.com/learn/mercy-meaning-bible/
Publisher: Christian Pure (https://christianpure.com/)
Published: 2024-05-24
Updated: 2026-10-26

In the Bible, mercy is God's compassion toward people in their sin and their misery. He spares us the punishment we deserve and helps us when we cannot help ourselves. The Old Testament's three chief words for it are chesed, his faithful love; rachamim, a tenderness named from the womb; and chanan, a stooping kindness.

God himself puts mercy at the front of his own name. Israel has just made the golden calf, and Moses has gone back up the mountain with new tablets of stone. Then "the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin" (Exodus 34:6–7). The word for "merciful" there is rachum, from the same root as rachamim. This is the name God gives himself before people who have just betrayed him. Mercy belongs to his name.

## What are the Hebrew and Greek words for mercy?

One verse holds all three words together. After his sin with Bathsheba, David prays, "Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions" (Psalm 51:1). "Have mercy" is chanan, "lovingkindness" is chesed, and "tender mercies" is rachamim. A man who has sinned greatly reaches for every word he has.

| Word | What it means | Where to read it |
| --- | --- | --- |
| chesed (Hebrew) | faithful, loyal love; kindness that keeps its promises | Psalm 136:1; Lamentations 3:22 |
| racham, rachamim (Hebrew) | tender compassion; from the same root as the word for womb | Isaiah 49:15 |
| chanan (Hebrew) | to stoop in kindness, to show favour | Psalm 51:1 |
| eleos, eleeō (Greek) | mercy, pity; to have mercy | Matthew 5:7 |
| splanchnizomai (Greek) | to be moved with compassion, literally in the inward parts | Luke 15:20 |

The King James Bible renders chesed as "mercy," "kindness" and "lovingkindness," and the lexicons add "steadfast love," "loyalty" and "faithfulness." Brown, Driver and Briggs count it 247 times in the Hebrew Bible. It is love that stays when it has every reason to leave. Psalm 136 sings it twenty-six times over, one line for each verse: "O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever."

Rachamim is softer still. Strong's dictionary defines the noun as "compassion" and, by extension, "the womb (as cherishing the fetus)." When God wants Israel to know how he feels, he asks a mother's question: "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee" (Isaiah 49:15). The third word, chanan, Strong's gives as "to bend or stoop in kindness to an inferior." It is the stoop of someone great toward someone small.

The Greek New Testament says eleos, which is mercy and pity together; eleeō, "have mercy," is the cry of a blind beggar near Jericho, "Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me" (Luke 18:38). And when the Gospels say Jesus was "moved with compassion," they use splanchnizomai, a verb Strong's explains as "to have the bowels yearn." Mercy in Scripture is felt in the body before it is put into words.

## Where does the word misericordia come from?

Many of us pray in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian or Latin, where mercy is misericordia. Thomas Aquinas explained the word in the thirteenth century: mercy "takes its name 'misericordia' from denoting a man's compassionate heart [miserum cor] for another's unhappiness." Drawing on Augustine, he called it "heartfelt sympathy for another's distress, impelling us to succor him if we can." The Latin and the Hebrew arrive at the same place: both picture a heart that aches at another's misery and hands that move to help.

## How does the Old Testament show God's mercy?

It shows a God who keeps choosing it. "The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy," David sings. "He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him" (Psalm 103:8, 10–11). Then comes a picture any parent knows: "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him" (Psalm 103:13).

The prophets marvel at it. "Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity," Micah asks; "he retaineth not his anger for ever, because he delighteth in mercy" (Micah 7:18). Forgiving is what he loves to do. And through Hosea he tells his people what he wants from them in return: "For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings" (Hosea 6:6).

## How did Jesus show mercy?

He made it visible. "When he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd" (Matthew 9:36). He ate with tax collectors, and when the Pharisees objected he sent them back to Hosea: "go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance" (Matthew 9:13).

His parables carry the same heartbeat. The prodigal son comes home rehearsing his apology, "But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him" (Luke 15:20). The father does not wait for the speech. Pope Francis began his 2015 letter announcing a Jubilee of Mercy with a sentence that gathers all of this up: "Jesus Christ is the face of the Father's mercy." Paul says the same of the whole saving work of God: "But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ" (Ephesians 2:4–5).

## How can God be both merciful and just?

The question is old, and it is in the very verse where God names himself. He keeps "mercy for thousands," and he "will by no means clear the guilty" (Exodus 34:7). The Heidelberg Catechism, a Reformed catechism of 1563, puts it plainly: "God is certainly merciful, but also just." Mercy never pretends that sin does not matter.

The two meet at the cross. Paul says God set forth Christ so "that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus" (Romans 3:26). The sin is judged, and the sinner is spared. A psalm saw it from far off: "Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other" (Psalm 85:10). So Paul can write that God saved us "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy" (Titus 3:5).

## Is mercy the same as grace?

They are close, and Scripture often sets them side by side: "Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4:16). Mercy looks at our distress, the misery and guilt we are in; Aquinas taught that another's distress is what moves it. Grace looks at God's free favour, the kindness he gives that nobody could earn. So [the difference between mercy and grace](https://christianpure.com/learn/mercy-vs-grace-understanding-the-difference/) is a difference of angle: mercy meets our misery, grace meets our unworthiness, and God gives them together as one gift.

## How do we show mercy to others?

Jesus makes it simple to say and hard to do: "Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful" (Luke 6:36). He blessed the people who live this way, "Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy" (Matthew 5:7), one of the [eight Beatitudes](https://christianpure.com/learn/beatitudes-explained/) of the Sermon on the Mount. When a lawyer asked who his neighbour was, Jesus told of a Samaritan who found a beaten stranger on the road and "had compassion on him," bound his wounds and paid for his care. "He that shewed mercy on him," the lawyer answered. "Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise" (Luke 10:33–37).

Mercy received and mercy withheld cannot live in the same heart. In the parable of the unforgiving servant, the king who cancelled a vast debt asks the man who would not cancel a small one, "Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee?" (Matthew 18:33). James says it shortly: "For he shall have judgment without mercy, that hath shewed no mercy; and mercy rejoiceth against judgment" (James 2:13).

The Catholic Church has long named the shape this takes. Its Catechism lists the spiritual works of mercy, "Instructing, advising, consoling, comforting," along with "forgiving and bearing wrongs patiently," and the corporal works: "feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned, and burying the dead." Most of that second list comes straight from Jesus' words about the last judgment: "I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me" (Matthew 25:35–36). Micah put the whole of it in one line: "do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God" (Micah 6:8).

## How do Christians pray for mercy?

With the oldest and shortest prayers we have. At Mass the people sing the Kyrie eleison, Greek for "Lord, have mercy," with the same verb the blind man used, and the Roman Missal calls it "a chant by which the faithful acclaim the Lord and implore his mercy." In the East, the spiritual writers of Sinai, Syria and Mount Athos handed on the Jesus Prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us sinners," which, the Catechism says, joins the hymn to Christ in Philippians 2 "with the cry of the publican and the blind men begging for light." The publican's own prayer was shorter still. He stood at a distance, beat his breast and said, "God be merciful to me a sinner," and Jesus tells us he "went down to his house justified" (Luke 18:13–14).

We can pray it tonight, and wake to find it answered. "It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness" (Lamentations 3:22–23).

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## Related reading

- [24 Best Bible Verses About God's Mercy](https://christianpure.com/learn/bible-verses-gods-mercy/)
- [21 Bible Verses About Mercy, From God's Mercy to Being Merciful](https://christianpure.com/learn/bible-verses-mercy/)
- [21 Bible Verses About Compassion](https://christianpure.com/learn/bible-verses-compassion/)
- [What is God's grace?](https://christianpure.com/learn/gods-grace-meaning/)
- [12 Prayers for Mercy](https://christianpure.com/learn/prayers-for-mercy/)

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