11 Million Dollars Worth of Hesed Love

“Thy lovingkindness is better than life.” Psalm 66:3

They didn’t know it, but when Tom Cook and Joseph Feeny promised with a handshake nearly three decades ago that if one of them ever won the Powerball lottery they would split the winnings, they were engaging in a thousands year old practice called hesed love.

“Hesed” is the Hebrew word in the Old Testament that is often translated “loving kindness,” with the connotation of doing something nice for someone. But the problem with this meaning is it doesn’t capture the full richness of the term.

Hesed actually involves the concept of two parties freely entering into a mutually benefiting covenant out of love and affection for one another and then fulfilling the covenant, the promise, they made to each other. So a better translation is the more awkward “covenant keeping love.”

For example, when when a man and woman marry each other, their marriage covenant is a form of hesed love.

In the same way, Tom Cook and Joseph Feeny didn’t have to promise to split their Powerball winnings with each other. But because they were close friends, they did promise, and with a mere handshake at that.

And then, twenty-eighty years later, when Tom’s ticket won the 22 million dollar Powerball lottery last month, he kept his promise and split the proceeds with his friend, making national headlines.

That is hesed love. It’s not just doing something nice for someone every now and then. Hesed can actually be very costly, in Tom’s case, to the tune of 11 million dollars.

So when our English translation of hesed in the Old Testament refers to praising God for his lovingkindness, as in “Thy loving lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise Thee” (Psalm 66:3), it’s not just referring to the nice things God has done for us, but to the covenant he has freely entered into with us out of love for us.

God was under no obligation to do this. After all, he hasn’t entered into any kind of covenant with fallen angels. But he has with us fallen people. And even when we have been faithless to our covenant — our New Covenant — God has been faithful to his side of the bargain.

He cannot deny himself.