March 18, 2020
How “Lovingkindness” Got So Popular, and So Far From Its Jewish Roots
By PhilologosA derived translation of the Hebrew Bible's ḥesed, which focuses on action and deeds for others, lovingkindness as understood today focuses on internal feeling.
Got a question for Philologos? Ask him directly at philologos@mosaicmagazine.com.
The other day I was talking over the phone with a friend who mentioned that, lately, the word “lovingkindness” seemed to be everywhere she looked. There were columns and articles on it; there were “lovingkindness meditation” books, and “lovingkindness practice” guides, and “teaching children lovingkindness” manuals. “I’ve heard,” she said, “that ‘lovingkindness’ is the translation given in the King James Bible for the Hebrew word ḥesed. Is that actually where the word comes from?”
“Lovingkindness” indeed entered English via Bible translation, but the translation by which it did so was not—or not mainly—the King James Version (KJV). One first finds it in the Coverdale Bible, the joint work of Myles Coverdale and William Tyndale that was published in 1535, three-quarters of a century before the King James, where it appears as “loving kindness.” What the KJV did was take the Coverdale Bible’s separate adjective and noun and compound them into a single word.