"Hesed - The Seed of the Biblical Story" is Impacting the Journeys of Truett Students
At Truett Seminary, the work of theological education is not confined to the classroom—it flourishes in the research, writing, and embodied witness of faculty members whose scholarship bears directly on the life of the Church. Jennifer Matheny, PhD, associate professor of Christian Scriptures, exemplifies this integration. Her research centers on difficult texts within the Old Testament, particularly those involving gendered violence, such as Judges 19–21, which often leave readers disoriented or disturbed. Rather than turning away from these texts, she creates space—especially for her students—to engage them with care, curiosity, and a theological imagination shaped by justice and compassion.
“If you encounter an interpretive approach to a biblical text that does not convince you or sit well with you,” she tells students, “this may be an opportunity for your own future engagement through research!” She encourages future ministers and scholars not to fear discomfort, but to view it as a generative place for theological discovery. Through this pedagogy of attentiveness, Dr. Matheny forms a generation of interpreters who are both honest about Scripture’s complexity and hopeful about its power to speak redemptively today.
Dr. Matheny’s research spans an impressive interdisciplinary range. She brings psychological insights into biblical studies through trauma-informed reading strategies and engagement with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), exploring how strong emotions—such as anger, sorrow, and fear—can become constructive theological signals rather than liabilities to faith. These insights are particularly fruitful when reading emotionally intense texts such as those in the prophets or the Psalms. “Strong emotions alert us to our core values,” she explains. This becomes a hermeneutical key: if readers pay attention to emotional intensity in the biblical text, they may discover new theological pathways for processing communal pain, fostering healing, and imagining more restorative futures. This method informs not only her written scholarship but also her classroom presence, where students are invited to think theologically across disciplines and to treat pain and pathos not as marginal but central to biblical interpretation and the work of ministry.
In spring 2026, Dr. Matheny will publish her much-anticipated book, Hesed, the Seed of the Biblical Story: New Life for Old Testament Theology (Baker Academic). Over a decade in the making, this project traces the theological richness of the Hebrew term hesed—a word so full of meaning that it resists singular translation. Often rendered as love, mercy, kindness, or faithfulness, hesed is not, according to Dr. Matheny, best defined in the abstract. Rather, it comes alive in stories.
From Ruth’s steadfast devotion to Naomi to the psalmist’s declaration that “the earth is full of YHWH’s hesed” (Psalm 33:5), the biblical narrative pulses with this covenantal love. The book emerged from ideas first formed while auditing an Old Testament Theology course with Bruce Waltke, and then matured over years of classroom teaching and research.
Its theological vision challenges previous approaches to Old Testament theology that often leaned toward reductionist summaries and thematic lists. In contrast, Dr. Matheny argues that hesed is a narrative and relational thread—a theological seed—that anchors God’s self-revelation and Israel’s communal memory. “Where hesed is witnessed, there is flourishing,” she writes. “Where hesed is neglected, there is violence and injustice.” Her work calls readers to rethink what holds the biblical story together—and what it means to be a people formed by God’s unrelenting faithfulness.
These themes flow seamlessly into Dr. Matheny’s teaching at Truett, especially in her course on Old Testament Theology. There, she invites students to enter the ongoing conversation of what it means to read Scripture with theological attentiveness, ethical seriousness, and spiritual imagination. Her current research serves as a springboard for student engagement, helping them envision how academic study can nourish the life of the Church.
Her interdisciplinary instincts are also evident in her recent work in The Oxford Handbook of Hosea, where she offers a fresh reading of Hosea 11 through metaphor theory and ACT. Instead of seeing Israel's response to God’s roar as terror, she interprets the image of birds fluttering home as a metaphor of return, rooted in love rather than fear—a reading shaped by emotional nuance, linguistic depth, and theological hope.
Whether exploring the symbolic language of dress and identity in the Five Scrolls, revisiting the emotive cries of Jeremiah, or uncovering how biblical metaphors speak into modern trauma, Dr. Matheny’s work consistently points toward healing, God's covenant faithfulness, and transformation. Her scholarship embodies the very hesed she studies: loyal, generative, and faithfully attuned to God’s movement among people and texts.