Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
shalom
Peace. Wholeness and completeness, not merely the absence of conflict.
Judges 6:24, in every translation this tool compares.
All settled. Everything's sorted. English says wholeness with phrases rather than with a noun.
Because it is used as a greeting, a blessing and a description of a state of affairs, and English peace only really covers the last of those and only negatively.
Every version reads peace, or well-being and prosperity in some contexts.
שָׁלוֹם shalom · H7965
Shalom is from a root meaning complete or whole. It covers physical safety, health, prosperity, and right relationship. Asking after someone's shalom is asking whether everything is as it should be.
English peace inherited the narrower Greek sense through the Septuagint and Latin, and means mostly the absence of war.
Greeting words carry a culture's idea of what a good state is. They are worth looking up in any language.
Peace is the majority rendering; well-being and prosperity appear where peace would be plainly wrong.
- shalom as physical welfare: Genesis 43:27; 2 Samuel 11:7
- shalem, complete: 1 Kings 6:7
- Septuagint eirene for shalom
