Question: Why does Solomon say, “Do not let kindness and truth leave you . . .”? It seems that he should have chosen different attributes.
Answer: Solomon’s choice of words here is anything but arbitrary. “Kindness” (ḥesed) and “truth” (ʾĕmet) are two of the richest covenant terms in the OT. Ḥesed describes God’s loyal, faithful love toward His people—the kind of love that keeps its commitments no matter the cost. ʾĔmet describes what is stable, reliable, and trustworthy.
These two words appear together throughout the OT as a pair describing God’s own character (23x total), most famously in Exod 34:6, where the Lord reveals Himself to Moses as “abounding in lovingkindness [ḥesed] and truth [ʾĕmet].” When these same terms show up elsewhere in Proverbs (14:22; 16:6; 20:28) and in royal and covenant contexts throughout the Psalms (Ps 89:14), they consistently carry this same weight: not just niceness and honesty, but covenant-keeping loyalty and dependability, the very qualities that define who God is.
A comparison with the similar passages (6:20–21; 7:2–3) shows that “lovingkindness and truth” refer to the father’s teaching (3:1), particularly the values expressed in his instructions in 3:5–12 and 3:21–35. So, when Solomon uses these words for his son, he’s doing something significant. He’s not simply telling his son to be kind and honest; he’s telling him to reflect God’s own covenant character in how he lives. As the son treasures and keeps that teaching, ḥesed and ʾĕmet become the natural fruit of his life. In other words, you can’t manufacture covenant love and faithfulness on your own. You cultivate them by staying close to what you’ve been taught.
Now notice the peculiar way Solomon phrases the warning: he doesn’t say “don’t leave kindness and truth behind.” He says “do not let kindness and truth leave you.” It’s almost as if these qualities are pictured trying to escape. Solomon reverses the expected image on purpose—not to be clever, but to sharpen the warning. The danger was never really that we might abandon these virtues through some dramatic act of rebellion. It’s that they quietly slip away from us if we’re not paying attention. It’s not ḥesed and ʾĕmet that walk away from us. We’re the ones who drift (cf. Heb 2:1, which pictures this same slow drifting from what we've been given).
That’s why Solomon follows with such vivid, almost desperate imagery: “Bind them around your neck. Write them on the tablet of your heart” (3:3b). You don’t casually misplace something bound to your neck or carved into your heart. Solomon wants his son (and us) to hold onto these qualities the way you’d hold onto something you refuse to lose. And what we bind to ourselves eventually shows on the outside—for better or worse.
Here’s why this matters far beyond a Hebrew word study. Many people have walked away from the church because they never saw these qualities lived out in His people. They saw crosses around our necks, but not ḥesed and ʾĕmet shaping our hearts. That gap between the symbol and the substance leaves people disillusioned—and sometimes even angry.
The Father’s message to His children is simple: “Let my steadfast love and faithfulness toward sinners become your identity. Don’t just wear the symbol; live out the reality. This is who Jesus is, and I want the world to see Him in you so that other sinners can see Him and find hope.”
When people see Jesus in us—not merely symbols of Him, but His character lived out—that’s when we truly “find favor and good repute” (3:4). There’s no other way to get there—and honestly, we wouldn’t want it any other way.