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Loving Kindness (Chesed)

"Those who regard vain idols forsake kindness. But I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving. That which I have vowed I will pay. Salvation is from the LORD. And the LORD spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry ground" (Jonah 2:8-9).
"Those who regard vain idols forsake kindness", the Hebrew word for kindness here is chesed. According to Jewish tradition chesed is one of the thirteen attributes of God.[1]. It is used again by Jonah when he was reasoning with God as to why he did not at first go to Nineveh, "for I knew that you are a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentant of evil" (Jonah 4:2). Jonah knew the kindness of God, he reasoned that His kindness would surpass the call to go to Nineveh.

Scholars have had a difficult time translating the Hebrew word chesed into English. Using words like “loving-kindness,” “mercy,” “steadfast love,” and “goodness,” but it really has no precise equivalent in English.[2] The loving-kindness of God is difficult for us to grasp sometimes as it is wholly undeserved on our part. Maybe the new covenant concept of Grace better describes the Hebrew word chesed. Unlike man whose "goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goes away" (Hosea 6:4), God's goodness is everlasting. The loving-kindness of God is a type of love that would lay down a life for a friend, that would sacrifice a son.

Under the new covenant the concept of putting on is expressed often, we are told to "put on therefore, as God’s elect, holy and beloved, a heart of compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness," (Col 3:12). Chesed is something God wants us to seek, "Do not let chesed and truth leave you; Bind them around your neck, Write them on the tablet of your heart" (Proverbs 3:3). And it is something He wants us to give to others, "what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God" (Micah 6:8). God established a covenant with his people and to maintain it he must exercise mercy to an unexampled degree. God's passion for righteousness is still there, but his loving-kindness is even greater still.
"His demand for righteousness is insistent, and it is always at the maximum intensity. The loving-kindness of God means that his mercy is greater even than that. The word chesed stands for the wonder of his unfailing love for the people of his choice, and the solving of the problem of the relation between his righteousness and his loving-kindness passes beyond human comprehension."[3].

Jonah had made a vow to God (Jonah 4:2), but he did not want to do the will of God, he had no loving-kindness for the people of Nineveh. He understood the loving-kindness of God and reasoned that God would show his loving-kindness toward himself and Nineveh, that he would spare the city, and would call another. Jonah paid regard to an idol, "those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of loving-kindness."v.8, We can worship things of our own creation, a physical thing like a statue, but we can also worship vain creations in our imaginations, incorrect images of God. Jonah was not walking in truth, his eyes were not on loving-kindness. 

 "For Your loving-kindness is before my eyes, And I have walked in Your truth" (Psalms 26:3).

 I Need You To Love Me - BarlowGirl
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