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B. Nouns.
$
(530), “firmness; faithfulness; truth; honesty; official obligation.” In Exod.
17:12 (the first biblical occurrence), the word means “to remain in one place”: “And his
[Moses’] hands were steady until the going down of the sun.” Closely related to this use
is that in Isa. 33:6: “And wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy times.…” In
passages such as 1 Chron. 9:22,
$
appears to function as a technical term meaning
“a fixed position” or “enduring office”: “All these which were chosen to be porters in the
gates were two hundred and twelve. These were reckoned by their genealogy in their
villages, whom David and Samuel the seer did ordain in their set [i.e., established]
office.”
The most frequent sense of
$
is “faithfulness,” as illustrated by 1 Sam. 26:23:
“The Lord render to every man his righteousness and his faithfulness.…” The Lord
repays the one who demonstrates that he does what God demands.
Quite often, this word means “truthfulness,” as when it is contrasted to false
swearing, lying, and so on: “Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see
now, and know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a man, if there be any
that executeth judgment, that seeketh the truth [i.e., honesty]” (Jer. 5:1; cf. Jer. 5:2). Here
$
signifies the condition of being faithful to God’s covenant, practicing truth, or
doing righteousness. On the other hand, the word can represent the abstract idea of
“truth”: “This is a nation that obeyeth not the voice of the Lord their God, nor receiveth
correction: truth [
$
] is perished, and is cut off from their mouth” (Jer. 7:28).
These quotations demonstrate the two senses in which
$
means “true”—the
personal sense, which identifies a subject as honest, trustworthy, faithful, truthful (Prov.
12:22); and the factual sense, which identifies a subject as being factually true (cf. Prov.
12:27), as opposed to that which is false.
The essential meaning of
$
is “established” or “lasting,” “continuing,”
“certain.” So God says, “And in mercy shall the throne be established: and he shall sit
upon it in truth in the tabernacle of David, judging, and seeking judgment, and hasting
righteousness” (cf. 2 Sam. 7:16; Isa. 16:5). Thus, the phrase frequently rendered “with
lovingkindness and truth” should be rendered “with perpetual (faithful) lovingkindness”
(cf. Josh. 2:14). He who sows righteousness earns a “true” or “lasting” reward (Prov.
11:18), a reward on which he can rely.
In other contexts,
$
embraces other aspects of the concept of truth: "[The
Lord] hath remembered his mercy and his truth toward the house of Israel …” (Ps. 98:3).
Here the word does not describe the endurance of God but His “truthfulness”; that which
He once said He has maintained. The emphasis here is on truth as a subjective quality,
defined personally. In a similar sense, one can both practice (Gen. 47:29) and speak the
“truth” (2 Sam. 7:28). In such cases, it is not a person’s dependability (i.e., others can act
on the basis of it) but his reliability (conformity to what is true) that is considered. The
first emphasis is subjective and the second objective. It is not always possible to discern
which emphasis is intended by a given passage.