The Hebrew verb chus means to have compassion, to spare, or to pity — expressing the emotional response of mercy that withholds deserved harm. It appears especially in contexts of divine mercy and prophetic intercession.
Chus captures the emotional moment when compassion overrides judgment. In Jonah 4:10-11, God uses chus in His climactic rebuke of Jonah's hard heart: Jonah pitied a plant, but God pities Nineveh — a city of 120,000 people who cannot tell their right hand from their left. This passage reveals the heart of divine mercy: God's compassion extends even to those who do not yet know Him. Ezekiel uses chus repeatedly in judgment passages where God declares 'my eye will not spare' — showing that divine wrath is not pity-less cruelty but the painful withdrawal of compassion that has been persistently rejected. Chus therefore defines what God always wishes He could do: spare.