Lexicon

H2580 - chen

Strong's: H2580 · BLB lookup Pronunciation: khen Part of speech: masculine noun (from the verbal root H2603 ḥanan, "to show favor / be gracious") Frequency: ~69 occurrences in the Hebrew Bible, distributed across the Pentateuch, the historical books (esp. Ruth, 1-2 Samuel, Esther), and the prophets (esp. Zechariah). LXX equivalent: χάρις (charis), direct correspondent. See G5485 - charis. Cognate forms: ḥanan (verb, "to show favor"), ḥannun (adjective, "gracious", applied 13× to YHWH), ḥannah (proper name "Hannah," "favored one"), Yochanan / John (יוֹחָנָן, "YHWH has shown favor").

Semantic range (Brown-Driver-Briggs)

Favor / favorable disposition, the standing toward another that grounds gracious action; the relational orientation that precedes the gift.
Grace / gracious gift, the gift itself, given without strict desert; the bestowal-toward-the-undeserving.
Charm / loveliness / beauty, the quality that evokes favor in the beholder (Prov 11:16; 17:8, "a bribe is a chen-stone in the eyes of him who possesses it"; 22:11; 31:30, "chen is deceitful and beauty is vain").
Idiomatic, "to find chen in the eyes of", the dominant idiom; ~40 occurrences. To find favor before someone (whether God or human), typically as the relational-personal precondition for the favor to be granted.

Theological force, the OT grace-vocabulary

Chen is the foundational OT vocabulary for grace, predating and conceptually undergirding the New Testament's charis (χάρις). The OT does not lack a doctrine of grace, it has the doctrine in chen / ḥesed / raḥamim. The Christian theological project is the unfolding of OT grace, not the introduction of it.

The trio that defines OT grace-vocabulary:

H2580 chen, favor (gracious disposition + gift), the act of grace
H2617 - hesed, covenant loyalty / steadfast love, the enduring grace within covenant
H7356 raḥamim (compassion / tender mercies), the emotional dimension of grace

The Noahic locus classicus. Genesis 6:8, "Noach matza chen b'einei YHWH", "but Noah found chen in the eyes of the LORD." This is the first explicit chen in the Hebrew Bible, and it is grace-against-judgment: the world is being judged for wickedness; Noah finds favor; the rest of the narrative depends on this gracious distinction. The Noahic chen establishes a pattern that runs throughout the OT and into the NT: in the midst of humanity's general guilt, particular individuals "find favor" with God by gracious election. Mary's annunciation (Luke 1:30, "charin in the sight of God") deliberately echoes the chen-pattern.

The Mosaic intercession scenes. Moses repeatedly intercedes for Israel with the chen-formula:

Exodus 33:12-17, "now if I have found chen in your sight, let me know your ways", Moses pressing into God's presence on the basis of having found favor
Exodus 33:13, 16, 17, the formula repeated
Exodus 34:9, "if now I have found chen in your sight, O Lord, please let the Lord go in our midst"

The chen-formula is the prayer-language of intercession; it appeals to the relational orientation of God's prior grace as the basis for further gracious action.

The Aaronic blessing. Numbers 6:25, "yaer YHWH panav elecha vichunneka", "the LORD make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you (ḥanan)." The benediction's central petition is for chen / ḥanan. The face-shining is the visual metaphor for gracious favor.

The God-revealed-character formulas. Exodus 34:6-7 (the LORD's self-revelation to Moses): "the LORD, the LORD God, raḥum and ḥannun", compassionate and gracious. Ḥannun (gracious) is the adjectival form of chen-action, and it is one of YHWH's primary self-disclosed attributes throughout the OT (Pss 86:15; 103:8; 111:4; 112:4; 116:5; 145:8; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2, the formula repeats with such density that it functions as a covenantal-creedal statement).

Notable verses

The Noahic anchor

Genesis 6.8, "Noah found favor (chen) in the eyes of the LORD"

Patriarchal use

Genesis 18:3, Abraham to the three visitors: "if I have found favor in your sight"
Genesis 19:19, Lot to the angels at Sodom: "your servant has found favor in your sight"
Genesis 32:5, Jacob to Esau's messengers: "that I may find favor in your sight"
Genesis 33:8, 10, 15, Jacob's reconciliation language with Esau
Genesis 39:4, 21, Joseph in Potiphar's house and in prison: finding favor; the LORD shows chen
Genesis 47:29; 50:4, Joseph and Jacob

Mosaic / Exodus

Exodus 3:21, "I will give this people chen in the sight of the Egyptians"
Exodus 11:3; 12:36, Israel finding chen with the Egyptians; the plundering motif
Exodus 33:12-17; 34:9, Moses's intercession formula (above)
Numbers 6:25, the Aaronic blessing
Numbers 11:11, 15, Moses pleading; "if I have found favor in your sight, please kill me at once"
Deuteronomy 24:1, finding chen in the marriage / divorce context

Ruth, chen as the structural verb of the Boaz-Ruth narrative

Ruth 2:2, "let me go to the field and glean ears of grain after one in whose sight I may find chen"
Ruth 2:10, 13, "why have I found chen in your sight?"

David / Samuel

1 Samuel 16:22, Saul to David: "let David now stand before me, for he has found chen in my sight"
2 Samuel 14:22; 15:25; 16:4, David in the Absalom narrative
Esther 2:9, 15, 17; 5:2, 8; 7:3; 8:5, Esther repeatedly finding chen (the central narrative-thread of her story)

Wisdom literature, chen with broader senses

Proverbs 1:9; 3:22; 4:9, wisdom adorns the seeker with chen
Proverbs 11:16; 22:11; 31:30, chen and beauty
Ecclesiastes 9:11, "neither is bread to the wise, nor riches to men of intelligence, nor chen to men of ability"

Prophetic, eschatological grace

Zechariah 4:7, "shouts of chen, chen to it!", over the temple-finishing capstone
Zechariah 12:10, "I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of chen and supplication, and they will look upon Me whom they have pierced"
Jeremiah 31:2, "the people who survived the sword found chen in the wilderness"

NT activation

The LXX renders chen with charis with near-mechanical regularity. The NT's grace-doctrine traffics in the charis-vocabulary the LXX inherited from chen:

Luke 1:30, Mary: "you have found charin in the sight of God", direct echo of Gen 6:8 / Mosaic chen-formula
Acts 2:47; Acts 4:33, early-church charis usage echoing the OT pattern
Romans 3:24, "justified as a gift by His chariti"
Ephesians 2.8-9, "by chariti you have been saved through faith"

Patristic / scholarly note

The OT grace-vocabulary has been the subject of major theological-historical attention, esp. since the rise of biblical-theology movements emphasizing the OT-NT continuity. Walter Brueggemann (The Land, 1977; Theology of the Old Testament, 1997), emphasizes the chen / ḥesed tradition as the ground of OT covenant theology. Jon Levenson, Jewish-side engagement with OT grace tradition. Gordon McConville (Grace in the End, 1993), Reformed engagement.

Patristic. The pre-Augustinian tradition rarely engaged Hebrew lexically (most Fathers worked from the LXX charis). Augustine (De Gratia Christi et de Peccato Originali) develops the doctrine of grace primarily from Pauline charis, but his treatment of Genesis 6:8 (City of God XV) brings the OT chen-pattern into focus: Noah's "finding favor" is grace-against-judgment.

Reformation tradition. Calvin (Institutes III.21-24), the Reformed doctrine of unconditional election grounds itself in part on the OT chen pattern (gracious favor is given, not earned; Noah does not deserve to find chen; Israel does not deserve God's favor). The Reformed sola gratia runs through the OT-Hebrew vocabulary as well as the NT-Greek.

Critical engagement with "two-Testament grace." The historic Lutheran-Reformed claim that the OT presents law and the NT grace is false on lexical grounds, the OT has the same grace-doctrine, in chen / ḥesed / raḥamim vocabulary, that the NT articulates in charis. The error of the Marcionite tradition was to ignore the Hebrew grace-lexicon. Modern Reformed scholarship (Sinclair Ferguson, The Whole Christ, 2016; Michael Horton, Pilgrim Theology, 2011) explicitly affirms the OT grace-tradition's continuity with the NT.

Verses in this codex

See Obsidian's backlinks pane for every verse page linking here. Anchors: Genesis 6.8 (the locus classicus), Exodus 34.6-7 (the ḥannun self-revelation), Numbers 6:25 (Aaronic blessing), Luke 1:30 (Mary's annunciation), Ephesians 2.8-9 (the NT consummation).