Steadfast love, covenant kindness — one of the Bible's great untranslatables, first here on Lot's lips (19:19). The word behind the Psalms' 'mercy,' and — paired with 'truth' (chesed ve-emet, see emet) — behind John's 'grace and truth' (see charis). It saturates Genesis 24, where the servant asks God to 'do chesed' with Abraham (24:12) and designs a sign that tests it — not the girl's beauty but her spontaneous kindness to a stranger and his ten thirsty camels. ⚠ Psalm 23:6 pairs it with tov and hands both to radaph, the hunting verb: goodness and chesed do not follow the psalmist, they pursue him. ⚠ Leviticus 20:17 (already on these pages) turns the very same word against brother-sister incest — 'it is a chesed,' rendered 'a disgrace' — in the identical book that opened with Lot begging for chesed at Sodom's gate, before his own daughters and their father became exactly this law's own case. Two real explanations exist and this translation does not choose: a second, homonymous root (cognate with Aramaic/Arabic words for shame) that only looks identical to the covenant-kindness word, or the same root turned bitterly ironic. KJV reads 'a wicked thing' here; ASV 'a shameful thing'; NIV 'a disgrace.' ⚠ It is the attribute Moses leans on hardest at Numbers 14:18-19, quoting the Sinai formula back to God and keeping only 'slow to anger and abundant in chesed' out of the whole merciful half — the two attributes that buy time and loyalty rather than acquittal. → first discussed at Gen 19:19