Emunah #60

Emunah comes from the same root as emet and amen, a root meaning to be firm, reliable, or to support. It describes the quality of being steady enough to lean on, and so is used both of God’s faithfulness and of the loyalty expected of people. Because it is a noun of firmness, it is closer to “faithfulness” than to the modern sense of “faith” as belief.

Biblical Usage

The clearest concrete use is in Exodus 17:12, where Moses’s hands grow heavy during the battle with Amalek, and Aaron and Hur support them until they are “steady” until sunset. The word there is emunah, so a physical picture of holding firm stands behind the abstract uses. Deuteronomy 32:4 calls God the Rock whose work is perfect and describes him as “a God of truth” (literally, of emunah) and without iniquity. Psalm 36:5 says that God’s faithfulness reaches to the clouds, and Lamentations 3:23, in the midst of grief, says that the LORD’s compassions are new every morning, “great is thy faithfulness.”

The best-known verse is Habakkuk 2:4: “the just shall live by his faith.” The Hebrew emunah there can mean faith, faithfulness, or steadfastness, and the King James Version chooses “faith.” The New Testament quotes the line in Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11, and Hebrews 10:38, each with its own emphasis.

Theological Significance

The noun emunah is not the same as the verb “believe,” although it comes from the same root, which is the root used when Abraham “believed in the LORD” (Genesis 15:6). Together they suggest that trust in God and reliability toward God are two aspects of one thing. Whether Habakkuk 2:4 is best read as “the righteous will live by their faith” or “by their faithfulness” is a long-standing question, and the answer affects how Paul’s use of the verse in Romans and Galatians is understood. Both readings agree that the passage sets a steady loyalty to God against the pride described in the preceding line.