Religion, as it appears in the ancient world and in the Bible, was never a private or abstract system of ideas. It was the living pattern of belonging to a divine household. The Hebrew Bible presents religion as a social and covenantal reality, where identity, ethics, and destiny are all shaped by participation in a sacred relationship. In that world, the words tzedakah (righteousness), ’amen (faithful trust), and hesed (steadfast love) defined what it meant to live rightly within that covenantal community.