The Biblical Key Word hesed: What Exactly Does It Mean?

The Biblical Hebrew word hesed (often rendered in English as `mercy' or `lovingkindness') can be regarded as a biblical key word. Prophet Hosea (6:6) uses it in a sentence best known in English as "I desire mercy and not sacrifice". In the New Testament, when Jesus quotes Hosea's sentence, he would have quoted it in the original language, Biblical Hebrew. On the other hand, the New Testament was written in Greek, which has neither exact nor near-equivalent of Biblical Hebrew hesed. It is important that the word hesed is well understood given its prominence in the Bible and the influence of the Bible on many languages. In this paper, I investigate its semantics and explicate it using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). I also shed light on its Greek counterpart, eleos. In addition, I seek to elucidate the meaning of Hosea's key sentence 6:6, of Jesus' interpretation of it, and of the key Christian phrase kyrie eleison.