οἰκτιρμός

G3628 names compassion, mercy, or pity toward need and suffering. Its five governed forms occur once each in Romans, 2 Corinthians, Philippians, Colossians, and Hebrews. Romans 12:1 appeals through God's mercies as Paul turns toward embodied worship and community instruction. Second Corinthians 1:3 blesses God as the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort within Paul's account of affliction and shared consolation. Neither expression lets a grammatical label carry a complete doctrine of divine mercy by itself.

Philippians 2:1 places compassion with encouragement in Christ, comfort from love, and fellowship in the Spirit as Paul appeals for shared-minded humility. Colossians 3:12 joins compassion with kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness, love, and peace as clothing for God's chosen people. These texts make compassion relational and active, but the noun alone does not prove a specific feeling, biological theory of emotion, or one required form of help.

Hebrews 10:28 says that one who rejected Moses' law died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. The phrase belongs to a severe warning by comparison and must not be generalized into a claim that Israel's law or Jewish people lacked compassion. It also does not authorize believers to imitate the penalty, bypass due process, or treat harshness as faithfulness.

Biblical compassion attends to people without making them inferior, erasing their agency, or concealing harm. It can motivate presence, material aid, advocacy, protection, truthful correction, professional care, and lawful reporting as the situation requires. It cannot be reduced to emotion, used to demand access to a sufferer, or opposed simplistically to justice and accountability.

The five direct forms name God's mercies, God as Father of compassion, compassion within Christian fellowship, compassion worn in community life, and mercy absent from the legal outcome cited in Hebrews 10.