StrongerBible

ḥen

חֵן

HebrewH2580“favor, grace, ...”

Appears 69 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 6:8Gen 18:3Gen 19:19Gen 30:27Gen 32:5(6)Gen 33:8Gen 33:10Gen 33:15Gen 34:11Gen 39:4Gen 39:21Gen 47:25Gen 47:29Exo 3:21Exo 11:3Exo 12:36Pro 22:11Zec 4:7
Names & words formed with this
Word studyResearch-gradekhennoun

What ḥen means

gracious favor freely shown by someone with power to someone without a claim on it, and the attractive quality that draws such favor out

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

Chen has one shape and two faces. Its first face is relational: the warm, willing favor that a stronger party turns toward a weaker one who has no right to demand it. A master shows it to a servant, a king to a subject, a host to a stranger, God to a worshipper. It lives in the eye of the giver, not in anything the receiver has earned, which is why the Bible's stock phrase is "to find favor in someone's eyes." Its second face is the charm or gracefulness that a person, a speech, or a thing possesses, the quality that makes others want to look on it kindly.

The two faces are connected, not separate words. The favor and the charm are the giving end and the drawing end of the same thing: the gracious person attracts the gracious response. The narrative books (Genesis through Esther) lean almost entirely on the first face, embedding the word in a polite formula of petition. The wisdom books, especially Proverbs, develop the second face, treating chen as an admired personal quality, even a fragile one that can charm without deserving to.

What the word does NOT yet carry is the later idea of favor shown to someone precisely because they are unworthy. The people who find favor in the Hebrew Bible are usually presented as in some way fitting: Noah is called righteous, Ruth is a worthy woman, Esther is beautiful. Chen names the lopsided shape of the relationship, the gift flowing downhill from the powerful to the powerless, rather than the moral failure of the one who receives it.

Nuances

1afavor freely shown by someone in a stronger position to someone weaker, who does nothing to compel it; the kindly regard in which a person is held
Gen 6:8Gen 18:3Gen 19:19Gen 30:27Gen 32:5(6)Gen 33:8Gen 33:10Gen 33:15Gen 34:11Gen 39:4Gen 39:21Gen 47:25
1bthe attractive, graceful quality of a person, words, or a thing, the charm that draws favor from others
Psa 45:2Pro 1:9Pro 3:22Pro 4:9Pro 5:19Pro 11:16Pro 17:8Pro 22:1Pro 22:11Pro 31:30Ecc 10:12Zec 12:10

What scholars say about ḥen

All the major lexicons (BDB, HALOT, the eighteenth-edition Gesenius, and Clines's Dictionary of Classical Hebrew) recognize two poles in chen: a relational sense (favor, acceptance) carried by the fixed phrase "to find favor in the eyes of," and an aesthetic sense (charm, gracefulness) seen mostly in Proverbs. The theological dictionaries take the relational sense as primary: Stoebe (TLOT) and Freedman, Lundbom, and Fabry (TDOT) argue that chen is the spontaneous, freely given favorable inclination of a stronger party toward a needier one, with charm as the secondary quality that elicits it; Yamauchi (TWOT) and Fretheim (NIDOTTE) follow the same line. HALOT and DCH, shaped by James Barr's warning against deriving meanings from etymology, decline to rank the senses. The older gloss "to bend or stoop in kindness to an inferior" is now treated as folk etymology, though its observation about social direction holds. Sakenfeld's study of חֶסֶד and Trible's study of רַחֲמִים let the three Hebrew benevolence words be kept distinct: favor presupposes no prior bond and sits in the giver's eye, loyal love is action within a bond, and compassion is womb-born tenderness for the suffering. The Greek Old Testament renders chen with charis in roughly nine of ten cases, a bridge that later carried Old Testament favor-language toward the New Testament's grace, even though, as Barr and John Barclay both stress, the Hebrew word does not yet encode favor toward the unworthy.

Where scholars disagree about ḥen

Whether the relational sense (favor freely shown by a superior) or the aesthetic sense (charm, gracefulness) is primary, and whether the two senses should be ranked at all.

  • majorityThe relational sense is primary and the charm sense is a secondary development: favor is the spontaneous, freely given inclination of a stronger party, and charm is the quality that draws it out.; Stoebe, TLOT (Hendrickson, 1997), 1:439-47; Freedman, Lundbom, and Fabry, TDOT (Eerdmans, 1986), 5:22-36
  • minorityThe senses should not be ranked at all, since etymology and a single basic meaning are unreliable guides to a word's actual usage.; Koehler, Baumgartner, and Stamm, HALOT (Brill, 1994-2000), s.v. chen; Clines, ed., DCH, vol. 3 (Sheffield, 1996), 270-71; Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford, 1961)
In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • Brown, Driver, and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford, 1906), 336, s.v. chenlexicon
  • Koehler, Baumgartner, and Stamm, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Brill, 1994-2000), s.v. chenlexicon
  • Clines, ed., The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. 3 (Sheffield, 1996), 270-71lexicon
  • Stoebe, "חנן ḥnn to be gracious," in Jenni and Westermann, eds., Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament (Hendrickson, 1997), 1:439-47dictionary
  • Freedman, Lundbom, and Fabry, "חָנַן ḥānan," in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (Eerdmans, 1986), 5:22-36dictionary
  • Yamauchi, "חָנַן (ḥānan)," in Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (Moody, 1980), §694adictionary
  • Fretheim, "חנן," in New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis (Zondervan, 1997), vol. 2dictionary
  • Sakenfeld, The Meaning of Hesed in the Hebrew Bible: A New Inquiry, Harvard Semitic Monographs 17 (Scholars Press, 1978)monograph
  • Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Fortress, 1978), ch. 2monograph
  • Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford, 1961)monograph
  • Barclay, Paul and the Gift (Eerdmans, 2015)monograph
  • Fox, Proverbs 1-9, Anchor Bible 18A (Doubleday, 2000); Proverbs 10-31, Anchor Yale Bible 18B (Yale, 2009)commentary
  • Childs, The Book of Exodus, Old Testament Library (Westminster, 1974), 596-600commentary
  • Sakenfeld, Ruth, Interpretation (John Knox, 1999)commentary

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of חֵן

m s absolute

חֵן

Gen 6:8, Gen 18:3, Gen 19:19, Gen 30:27, Gen 32:5, Gen 33:8, Gen 33:10, Gen 33:15

m s construct

חֵן

Exo 3:21, Exo 11:3, Exo 12:36, Pro 22:11, Zec 4:7

m s construct

חִנּוֹ

Gen 39:21