What Is Mercy According to the Bible?

Many of us first heard about mercy in song. Every Sunday, congregations around the world sing "Great Is Thy Faithfulness," a hymn Thomas Chisholm wrote in 1923 from the words of Lamentations 3. Others know the word from the old liturgical prayer "Lord, have mercy," or from the phrase "at the mercy of," which means being in someone else's hands.

That last sense is closer to the Bible than it seems. Biblical mercy is what happens when someone who has power over us chooses to be kind. It is one of the first things God says about Himself, it fills the desperate prayers of the Psalms and the Gospels, and Jesus puts it at the center of what it means to follow Him.

In this study you will see what the Hebrew and Greek words behind "mercy" mean, how mercy shows up in God's character and in the life of Jesus, how it relates to justice and to pain, and what it looks like to be merciful today. For the bigger picture, also read what is the love of God, because mercy is one of the most concrete forms that love takes.

The Short Answer: What Is Mercy?

The English word comes from the Latin merces, which originally meant "wages" or "price" and came to mean the favor shown to someone who could not pay. The Bible adds a decisive detail: most of the time, the person in misery is not innocent. God's mercy reaches the guilty too.

That is why, in Scripture, mercy keeps company with forgiveness, patience and faithfulness. It does not ignore the problem; it walks toward it. The sections below show each of these sides in a specific passage.

The Bible's Words for Mercy

English Bibles use "mercy," "compassion," "pity" and "steadfast love" for several different Hebrew and Greek words. Knowing the main ones helps you catch shades of meaning that translation tends to flatten.

• Rachamim (Hebrew): womb-love

  It comes from rechem, womb. It is the word behind Isaiah 49:15: "Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you." The adjective rachum, "merciful," is used in the Bible almost only of God.

• Hesed (Hebrew): loyal love

  This is the faithful, covenant love that does not give up. The KJV often rendered it "mercy"; the ESV usually says "steadfast love," as in the refrain of Psalm 136: "his steadfast love endures forever." When the Bible speaks of mercy, hesed reminds us it is constant, not a passing impulse.

• Eleos (Greek): compassion that helps

  It is the word in "Blessed are the merciful" (Matthew 5:7) and in the cry "have mercy on me." The Greek translation of the Old Testament often used eleos for hesed, which links the two Testaments.

• Splanchnizomai (Greek): moved in the gut

  It comes from splanchna, the inner organs. English Bibles translate it "had compassion." In the Gospels it almost always describes Jesus, and in the parables it describes the father of the prodigal son and the Good Samaritan.

Put together, these words paint a consistent picture. Biblical mercy rises from deep inside, like a mother's love (rachamim); it is loyal and lasting (hesed); and it turns into real help (eleos), often after a knot in the stomach at someone else's suffering (splanchnizomai).

Mercy in the Character of God

In Exodus 33, right after the golden calf, Moses asks: "Please show me your glory." God answers by passing before him and proclaiming His own name: "The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin" (Exodus 34:6-7).

The setting makes the words even stronger. Israel had just broken the covenant, and the first thing God says about Himself is not "I am just" or "I am powerful" but "I am merciful." This declaration became a kind of creed of the Old Testament. It echoes in Nehemiah 9:17, Psalm 86:15, Psalm 103:8, Psalm 145:8, Joel 2:13 and Jonah 4:2. To explore God's other attributes, see who is God according to the Bible.

Psalm 103 explains this mercy with everyday images. "He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities" (Psalm 103:10). "As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust" (Psalm 103:13-14). God is merciful because He knows how fragile we are and does not use it against us.

Micah closes his book with the same wonder: "Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression [...] because he delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea" (Micah 7:18-19). God does not hand out mercy reluctantly. He delights in it.

There is also a close relative worth naming. Hebrews 4:16 invites us: "Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." Mercy and grace appear side by side in many passages, but they are not synonyms. The difference between them is explained in our study on God's grace in the Bible; here the focus stays on mercy.

The Mercy Seat: Where God Met His People

English readers have a word that Portuguese and Spanish Bibles do not: the mercy seat. God told Moses, "You shall make a mercy seat of pure gold" (Exodus 25:17). It was the golden lid of the ark of the covenant, between the cherubim, and once a year, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest sprinkled blood on it for the sins of the people.

The Hebrew word, kapporet, is linked to the idea of covering or atoning. William Tyndale coined "mercy seat" in his 1530 translation, following Martin Luther's German Gnadenstuhl, and the name stuck in English Bibles ever since. Hebrews picks up the image: "Above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat" (Hebrews 9:5).

The name captures something true. The place where God's holiness met Israel's sin was not a judgment bench but a mercy seat. The meeting point between a holy God and guilty people was marked by mercy.

Jonah: When Mercy Makes Us Angry

The book of Jonah may be the Bible's most honest portrait of mercy, because it shows someone who did not like it. God sends Jonah to preach in Nineveh, capital of Assyria, the most brutal empire of the day. Jonah runs. Eventually he preaches, the city repents, and "God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it" (Jonah 3:10).

Jonah's reaction is startling. He is furious, and he explains why he ran in the first place: "for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster" (Jonah 4:2). Jonah quotes the creed of Exodus 34 as a complaint. He wanted mercy for Israel, not for its enemies.

The book ends with a question from God that is never answered: "And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?" (Jonah 4:11). The question is aimed at the reader too. God's mercy is usually bigger than our willingness to see it reach certain people.

The Mercy of Jesus in the Gospels

The Gospels show Jesus moved by compassion again and again. "When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd" (Matthew 9:36). Compassion came first: He saw, He felt, and then He taught, healed and fed.

The cry "have mercy on me" comes from very different people. Blind Bartimaeus by the Jericho road: "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" (Mark 10:47). The Canaanite woman, a foreigner, pleading for her daughter (Matthew 15:22). Ten lepers standing at a distance: "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us" (Luke 17:13). None of them listed any merits. All of them appealed to who Jesus is, and He answered.

Jesus also used mercy to confront religious people. When He was criticized for eating with tax collectors and sinners, He quoted Hosea: "Go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.' For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners" (Matthew 9:13). Later He rebuked the Pharisees for neglecting "the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness" (Matthew 23:23).

Two of His best-known parables turn on this word. In the parable of the prodigal son, the father sees his son far off "and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him" (Luke 15:20). In the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, the man who goes home justified is the one who could only say, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" (Luke 18:13). For more of Jesus' encounters with people, read how did Jesus treat people.

Mercy and Justice: Does God Look the Other Way?

A common question is whether God's mercy cancels His justice. The Bible says no. The same passage that proclaims "a God merciful and gracious" goes on to say He "will by no means clear the guilty" (Exodus 34:7). God does not pretend evil never happened. Mercy is not moral indifference.

What the Bible shows is that God's mercy opens a way back. "Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy" (Proverbs 28:13). That was David's path in Psalm 51, which opens: "Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions." If you want to take that step, see how to ask God for forgiveness and learn what biblical repentance is.

Psalm 85 describes the meeting in poetry: "Steadfast love and faithfulness meet; righteousness and peace kiss each other" (Psalm 85:10). The Christian faith sees the cross of Christ as the place where this happens fully: sin is taken seriously and, at the same time, the sinner is welcomed. Paul says God "saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy" (Titus 3:5). The theme of salvation is developed in what is salvation according to the Bible.

Mercy in the Middle of Pain: Lamentations 3

The most famous verse about mercy was not written on a good day. Lamentations, traditionally attributed to Jeremiah, is a set of funeral poems for Jerusalem after the Babylonians destroyed it. It opens: "How lonely sits the city that was full of people!" (Lamentations 1:1). The temple was in ruins and the people were in exile.

In chapter 3 the poet describes his pain without softening it: "Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall!" (Lamentations 3:19). Then comes the turn: "But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness" (Lamentations 3:21-23). The King James puts it in the words many hymn singers know: "It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not."

His hope does not come from changed circumstances. They had not changed. It comes from remembering who God is. And the text goes on: "for, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men" (Lamentations 3:32-33). If you are walking through a season of suffering, why does God allow suffering goes deeper into that question.

Paul calls God "the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction" (2 Corinthians 1:3-4). Mercy received in pain often becomes, with time, mercy offered to others who hurt.

"Blessed Are the Merciful": How to Practice Mercy

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says: "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy" (Matthew 5:7). In Luke He sums it up: "Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful" (Luke 6:36). Mercy is not only something we receive; it is a way of life. Scripture points to a few clear practices:

• Stop for the person who is hurting

  In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the priest and the Levite pass by on the other side. The Samaritan "when he saw him, he had compassion" and cared for the wounded man. When Jesus asks who was the neighbor, the answer is: "The one who showed him mercy." Jesus concludes: "You go, and do likewise" (Luke 10:33-37).

• Forgive as you have been forgiven

  In the parable of the unforgiving servant, the king asks: "And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?" (Matthew 18:33). Forgiving is not easy, and it does not mean pretending nothing happened. To take that step honestly, read how to forgive someone who deeply hurt you.

• Meet concrete needs

  In Matthew 25, Jesus identifies with people in need: "For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me" (Matthew 25:35-36). Christian tradition calls these acts the works of mercy.

• Judge with mercy

  James warns: "For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment" (James 2:13). This does not ask us to give up the truth, only to make sure harshness is not our first response.

• Hold mercy and justice together

  Micah sums up what God asks: "to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God" (Micah 6:8). The word translated "kindness" is hesed. Biblical mercy is not sentimentality; it walks hand in hand with what is right.

The order matters. Jesus does not ask for mercy from people who have never received it. God's mercy comes first, ours second. People who remember how much they have been forgiven find it easier to forgive.

"Lord, Have Mercy" in Christian Worship

The cry of the blind men and the lepers became one of the oldest prayers of the church. The Kyrie eleison, Greek for "Lord, have mercy," is still prayed in Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and Lutheran services. Eastern Christians repeat the Jesus Prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner," which draws on the tax collector of Luke 18. Many Catholics observe Divine Mercy Sunday on the second Sunday of Easter, a devotion linked to Saint Faustina Kowalska.

Evangelical and Reformed churches have sung mercy for centuries in hymns such as Frederick Faber's "There's a Wideness in God's Mercy" (1854) and, of course, "Great Is Thy Faithfulness." The traditions express it differently, as the article on Catholics and evangelicals explains, but all of them point to the same merciful God.

If you feel you have gone too far to be reached, what to do when you feel you don't deserve God's forgiveness was written for that moment. And if you would like a verse and a prayer for today, try the verse and prayer generator on our home page.