Emet: The Truth You Can Lean On

Truth, in English, is a property of statements: a thing is true if it matches the facts. The Hebrew word behind truth in your Old Testament is a property of people and of God: a thing is emet if it holds, if you can put your weight on it and it does not give. The word you say at the end of a prayer comes from the same root.

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Lesson 6 of 12 · Hebrew

Emet is firmness: what is reliable, steady, able to be leaned on. Of God it means faithfulness; of a person it means trustworthiness; of a word it means that what was said will hold. It is the root of amen, which does not mean "I agree" but "that is firm, let it stand." English translates it truth, and truth in English has drifted toward accuracy — a statement matching the facts — which is a narrower and colder thing. When the Old Testament says God is a God of truth, it is not saying his statements are accurate. It is saying he does not give way.

Where it stands beside hesed

The word’s most important place is the one it shares with the first word of this series. In God’s own description of himself the two are a pair.

Yahweh passed by before him, and proclaimed, “Yahweh! Yahweh, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness and truth, — Exodus 34:6 · WEB

Read the comment on The Name Proclaimed

Abundant in loving kindness and truth: hesed and emet, side by side, and they travel together through the whole Old Testament — some thirty times as a pair. Loyal love and firmness. The first is love that keeps its word; the second is the keeping. They are two sides of one thing, and the Psalms sing them as one.

אֶמֶת ʼemeth H571

contracted from אָמַן; stability; (figuratively) certainty, truth, trustworthiness; assured(-ly), establishment, faithful, right, sure, true (-ly, -th), verity.

From a root meaning to be firm, to be supported, to stand: the verb is used of a nurse carrying a child, of a pillar bearing a roof, of a promise being confirmed. Emet is the noun — firmness, stability, reliability, and so faithfulness and truth. Amen is the same root in another form: "firm," "so be it," "let it stand." When Jesus begins a sentence amen, amen, I say to you, he is invoking this word twice before he speaks.

Truth that springs from the ground

Psalm 85 puts the word in a picture no English sense of truth can hold.

Truth springs out of the earth. Righteousness has looked down from heaven. — Psalm 85:11 · WEB

Read the comment on Mercy and Truth Meet Together

Truth springs out of the earth, and righteousness looks down from the sky. A fact does not spring out of the ground. Faithfulness can — a land keeping its promise of harvest, a people keeping theirs — and the psalm is describing a world in which every relationship holds. The verse before it, where righteousness and peace kiss, brought two words of this series together; this one adds a third.

“He said, “Blessed be Yahweh, the God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken his loving kindness and his truth toward my master. As for me, Yahweh has led me on the way to the house of my master’s relatives.”” Genesis 24:27 · WEB
Abraham’s servant blesses the God who has not forsaken his loving kindness and his truth: the pair, at a well, when a promise is being kept.
“Your righteousness is an everlasting righteousness. Your law is truth.” Psalm 119:142 · WEB
Your law is truth: not that every sentence is accurate, but that the whole of it holds.
“These are the things that you shall do: speak every man the truth with his neighbor. Execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates,” Zechariah 8:16 · WEB
Speak truth each to his neighbor, and judge with truth in your gates: reliability as a civic duty.
“so that he who blesses himself on the earth will bless himself in the God of truth; and he who swears on the earth will swear by the God of truth; because the former troubles are forgotten, and because they are hidden from my eyes.” Isaiah 65:16 · WEB
The God of truth, twice — in Hebrew, the God of amen, the one who holds.

Amen

The word every reader has said is this one. To answer amen to a prayer or a blessing is not to say "I agree with the content." It is to say "that stands; let it be firm." Deuteronomy has the whole people answer amen to each curse read from Mount Ebal — not approving the curses, but binding themselves to them as firm. Paul says that in Christ every promise of God is yes, and through him the amen (2 Corinthians 1:20): the promises hold, and he is the holding. Revelation calls Christ himself the Amen. A word that meant "reliable" became a name.

Where the Greek pulls the other way

Here a real difference, and it should be marked. The New Testament’s word for truth is aletheia, which in Greek thought meant what is unconcealed — reality as opposed to appearance, fact as opposed to error. When the Greek translators of the Old Testament met emet they used aletheia for it, and so the two senses met: the Hebrew truth that holds and the Greek truth that is real. Most of the New Testament uses the word with the Hebrew sense still audible; some readers hear the Greek sense taking over, especially in John. When Jesus says he is the truth (John 14:6), a reader hearing Hebrew hears "I am the one who holds"; a reader hearing Greek hears "I am the reality." The sentence may mean both, and readers have argued which is primary. What the lesson can say is where the word came from.

What the word asks

It asks to be leaned on, and to be leaned on in return. Speak emet to your neighbor, says Zechariah: not "be accurate," but "be someone whose word holds." The truth the Old Testament prizes is the kind a person can rest their weight on, and its opposite is not error but betrayal.