bleeds off the word’s subtlety. It’s a little like pronouncing the word hesed without the guttural. Mercy, kindness, and lovingkindness communicate the upshot of hesed, but they don’t really pin down its meaning. The translators of the Revised Standard Version and the New Revised Standard Version have given us the wonderful phrase steadfast love to express hesed as “promise-keeping love.” After Moses made two new tablets of stone, as he hid in the cleft of the rock, “The Lord passed before him, and