The Character of God: Compassion
There are many things we learn about God from the things other people say about him, from the stories in the bible that describe his actions or record his words to someone or about a specific situation. But there are a few unique cases where God actually tells us something about himself. God describes himself to Moses in Exodus 34:6-7 and we can gather the significance of this scripture from the way it is quoted about 12 more times in the bible and referred to several other times as well.
The first word God uses is compassion. There is a maternal quality about this word. It is actually from the same root as the word for womb – so there is something about this word that has to do with the way a mother cares about her children. Sometimes this same greek word is translated to “deeply moved” in other stories of the bible.