Properly, to cover , i.e. (figuratively) to compassionate
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חוּס (ḥûs) means to spare, to look upon with pity, to have compassion on — with a specific sense of withholding destruction because of what one sees. The word carries the visual dimension: ḥûs involves looking at the object of pity and responding to what is seen by holding back.
Reader summary
Full entry for חוּס (H2347) · Open the biblical lexicon
חוּס (ḥûs) means to spare, to look upon with pity, to have compassion on — with a specific sense of withholding destruction because of what one sees. The word carries the visual dimension: ḥûs involves looking at the object of pity and responding to what is seen by holding back.
The BSB source-word alignment has 24 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include with pity (5), . . . (2), pity (2), spare (2), but I spared (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 45:20. Its strongest book concentrations include Ezekiel (9), Deuteronomy (5), Jeremiah (2), Jonah (2).
חוּס (ḥûs) means to spare, to look upon with pity, to have compassion on — with a specific sense of withholding destruction because of what one sees. The word carries the visual dimension: ḥûs involves looking at the object of pity and responding to what is seen by holding back. BDB notes the root may relate to covering, sheltering, or protecting what one looks upon.
The most famous use of ḥûs is in the closing question of Jonah: 'Should I not have pity on Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?' (Jon 4:11). The divine question is the book's final word, unanswered in the text, addressed both to Jonah and to the reader.
The argument is by analogy: Jonah had ḥûs (pity) on the plant that gave him shade; should God not have ḥûs on a great city of human beings who are spiritually disoriented? The ḥûs of Jonah 4 is the culmination of the book's theology: God's restraint of judgment on Nineveh is not indifference to their sin but a deliberate act of looking upon 120,000 disoriented human beings and choosing not to destroy them.
The word is used in Ezekiel with the precise opposite sense — God's eye will not ḥûs, will not spare, will not look with pity on Jerusalem in the hour of judgment (Ezek 5:11; 7:4; 9:10) — which makes the Jonah use of ḥûs even more remarkable: what God withholds from Jerusalem he extends to Nineveh.
חוּס is currently counted about 24 times in the local Hebrew index. It appears in narrative contexts (Saul sparing Agag, 1 Sam 15:3), in prophetic judgment announcements (God's eye will not spare), in Psalms, and prominently in the closing question of Jonah. It often appears in negative constructions ('his eye did not spare') in judgment contexts, making the positive uses — when God does ḥûs — all the more theologically significant.
Yahweh (the Lord) said, "You have been concerned about this plant, for which you have not labored, neither made it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night.
The setup for God's closing ḥûs question: Jonah had ḥûs on the plant (v.10 — 'you had pity on the plant'). God uses Jonah's own emotional response as the analogical ground for the divine ḥûs on Nineveh. Jonah's pity for a temporary shade plant — something he did not make, did not tend, and possessed for one day — is leveraged to expose the incoherence of withholding pity from 120,000 human beings made in God's image.
Shouldn't I be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who can't discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much livestock?"
The book's closing unanswered question: 'should I not have ḥûs on Nineveh?' The phrase 'who cannot discern their right hand from their left' is probably a description of moral and spiritual disorientation — people who do not know what direction life is — rather than a reference to children exclusively, though that reading is possible. The addition of 'and also many animals' extends the divine ḥûs beyond human beings to the created order, showing the comprehensive scope of divine pity.
And as I listened, He said to the others, “Follow him through the city and start killing; do not show pity or spare anyone!
The exact contrast: ḥûs is what God commands not to do in the judgment of Jerusalem. 'Your eye shall not spare, you shall not ḥûs.' The Ezekiel uses of the negated ḥûs-formula establish the theological weight of what God does in Jonah: withholding the no-ḥûs judgment from Nineveh is not the default but the deliberate choice of the God who is ḥannûn and raḥûm.
Then I instructed the Levites to purify themselves and guard the gates in order to keep the Sabbath day holy. Remember me for this as well, O my God, and show me mercy according to Your abundant loving devotion.
Nehemiah's personal prayer for divine ḥûs — 'spare me (ḥûs) according to the greatness of your ḥesed.' The grounding of the ḥûs request in ḥesed (covenant love) is significant: the request to be spared is not an appeal to merit but to the divine character whose covenant love exceeds the obligation to judge. This is the same theological structure as Jonah: ḥûs is grounded in ḥesed.
He will take pity on the poor and needy and save the lives of the oppressed.
The royal Psalm's description of the ideal king: he will ḥûs on the poor and needy, save their lives. The king who embodies YHWH's ḥûs toward the vulnerable is the messianic portrait of what divine pity looks like when it enters the human political order. The sparing of the poor and the saving of the vulnerable are the two faces of the same ḥûs that God exercises toward Nineveh.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. Compassion rooted in protective concealment: to shield someone from harm through merciful restraint
Compassion rooted in protective concealment: to shield someone from harm through merciful restraint
properly, to cover, i.e. (figuratively) to compassionate BDB: pity Usage: pity, regard, spare.
How the stem changes the meaning of this verb across the biblical text.
This verb appears through different tense, voice, mood, or stem patterns. Those forms help readers see how the action is presented in context.
חוּס is a primitive root - no further derivation.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
The book of Jonah ends with a question, not an answer. God asks whether he should not have ḥûs on Nineveh, and the text closes without recording Jonah's reply. The ending is deliberately open because the question is addressed as much to the reader as to the prophet. The homiletical force of ḥûs in Jonah 4 is the dismantling of theological systems that restricts divine pity to the religiously qualified.
Jonah had better theology than the Ninevites by any metric — and yet it was the Ninevites who received ḥûs, and Jonah who sat in angry shade nursing his wound at divine graciousness. The analogical argument God makes — you had ḥûs on a plant, should I not have ḥûs on 120,000 human beings? — is a gentle and devastating reduction of Jonah's position to absurdity.
The preacher's task is to let this question land without deflecting it: God looks at spiritually disoriented people who cannot tell right from left, and his response is ḥûs rather than destruction. That same ḥûs is what congregations have received before they knew what direction life was.
Jon.4.11
חוּס is a hollow verb (ḥet-waw-samek) whose basic meaning involves the visual act of looking upon someone and then withholding harm or extending protection. The LXX translates ḥûs with pheidomai (to spare, to refrain from) and sometimes eleein (to have mercy), depending on context. In the Jonah 4 context, both the pity on the plant (v. 10) and the divine pity on Nineveh (v.
11) Use the same Hebrew verb — the parallel is explicit. The negative ḥûs formula in Ezekiel ('your eye shall not spare and you shall not ḥûs') appears seven times in Ezekiel 5-9, establishing the ḥûs-withholding of judgment as the normative divine response to Jerusalem's sin. The Jonah use, where God does ḥûs on Nineveh, is the inversion of the Ezekiel pattern — mercy where judgment was expected.
The NT does not use a direct equivalent of ḥûs, but the concept is embodied in several key Gospel moments. The parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:20) — 'while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him and felt compassion (esplagchnisthē) and ran and embraced him' — is the narrative enactment of ḥûs: the father looks on the disoriented, spiritually confused son and withholds the judgment the son himself expects ('make me as one of your hired servants').
Jesus' repeated splanchnizomai toward crowds (Matt 9:36), lepers (Mark 1:41), and the widow of Nain (Luke 7:13) is the incarnate expression of the divine ḥûs — the Son who is God looking on the disoriented and spiritually homeless and responding with compassionate action. Romans 9:15's quotation of Exodus 33:19 ('I will have mercy on whom I have mercy') grounds the NT gospel's extension to the Gentiles in the same sovereign divine pity that Jonah 4:11 expresses: God has ḥûs on whom God has ḥûs, and Nineveh is not outside that reach.
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