compassion: deep, tender mercy felt in the gut, the kind God shows his people and calls them to show one another
In the New Testament this word means deep, tender compassion, the kind of mercy that is felt inwardly before it is ever put into action. Almost everything it carries is borrowed from the Hebrew Bible rather than from ordinary Greek. It became the standard Greek stand-in for the Hebrew word for compassion (רַחֲמִים), a word built on the picture of a mother's womb, so its root image is the fierce, protective tenderness a parent feels for a child. That is the compassion this word points to: warm, personal, and bound up with covenant loyalty.
The New Testament almost always uses it in the plural, "mercies," which sounds odd in Greek but follows the Hebrew word behind it. Paul appeals to "the mercies of God" as the reason believers should offer their whole lives to him (Romans 12:1), and he blesses God as "the Father of mercies" (2 Corinthians 1:3). The same tender compassion is then handed on: believers are told to have it toward one another and to put on a heart of compassion (Philippians 2:1; Colossians 3:12). The mercy God shows his people becomes the mercy his people show each other.
The word sits close to two others. One names the inner core where deep feeling is seated (σπλάγχνα), and the New Testament often stacks the two together for emphasis. The other is the wider word for mercy shown in faithful, saving action (ἔλεος). These are near-synonyms, overlapping shades of one idea rather than three separate mental states.
The one place the tone shifts is a warning about judgment. Under the law of Moses, a person convicted on the testimony of witnesses "died without mercy" (Hebrews 10:28). Here the word is closer to the plain pity or leniency a court might extend to the condemned, and the point is precisely that it was withheld.
Nuances
Disputed
Whether οἰκτιρμός is a distinct term for the inward feeling of compassion, over against its near-synonyms for mercy enacted (ἔλεος) and the visceral seat of feeling (σπλάγχνα), or whether the three are interchangeable near-synonyms within one semantic field.
- minorityThe three terms carry fixed distinctions: οἰκτιρμός is the inward feeling of pity, ἔλεος is mercy shown in action, and σπλάγχνα is the bodily seat of that feeling.; R. C. Trench, Synonyms of the New Testament, §xlvii; J. H. Thayer, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, s.v. οἰκτιρμός
- majorityThe distinction cannot be pressed, since οἰκτιρμός also denotes concrete acts of mercy; the terms function as overlapping near-synonyms in a single semantic field.; Louw-Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, §88.75-88.82; M. R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament, on Romans 12:1; James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (1961)