Words · Hebrew Words · Lesson 2, word 1 of 5
אֱמֶתemet
Truth that is firm, reliable and faithful.
Why this word is here. Paired with hesed in God's self-description at Exodus 34:6; English splits it into 'truth' and 'faithfulness' and loses the pairing.
What it means
BDB's range: firmness, faithfulness, truth. Under firmness: sureness and reliability, stability, continuance. Under truth: truth as spoken, truth in testimony and judgment, truth in divine instruction, and true doctrine. Emet is what holds up: words that match reality and a character that does not wobble.
Emet shares its root with emunah (faithfulness) and amen. The family resemblance is real: all three are about things and people that can be leaned on.
Where you meet it
Then the LORD passed in front of Moses and called out: “The LORD, the LORD God, is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion and faithfulness,
Exodus 34:6 (BSB)
God proclaims himself 'abounding in loving devotion (hesed) and faithfulness (emet)'. Emet here is God's reliability as much as his truthfulness.
Loving devotion and faithfulness have joined together; righteousness and peace have kissed.
Psalm 85:10 (BSB)
Anchor verse 'Loving devotion (hesed) and truth (emet) have met; righteousness and peace have kissed.' The great character-words of Exodus 34 meet again as a picture of restoration.
The entirety of Your word is truth, and all Your righteous judgments endure forever.
Psalm 119:160 (BSB)
'The entirety of Your word is truth (emet).' Truth predicated of God's word as a whole.
Why it matters
Emet keeps 'truth' from becoming an abstraction. In the Bible, truth is something a person can be: reliable, proven, faithful over time. That is why Scripture can call God 'the God of truth' and mean both that he never lies and that he never lets his people down.
Watch out
The over-claim is to read emet as only 'facts that are correct'. Much modern apologetic preaching imports a purely propositional sense and misses that emet, very often, is faithfulness you can test by waiting. When Exodus 34:6 is quoted about God's character, translating emet simply as 'truth' and moving on undersells the verse.
In this lesson
- emunah (אֱמוּנָה): Firmness, fidelity, steadfastness.
- teshuvah (from the verb shuv) (תְּשׁוּבָה): Return, turning back to God (the verb shuv carries this).
- kavod (כָּבוֹד): Glory, honour and splendour, God's visible majesty.
- berakhah (בְּרָכָה): Blessing: a gift of good, spoken or given.
Sources
- Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew Lexicon (BDB, 1906)
- Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible / STEP Hebrew data
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