שָׁלוֹם shalom — peace, wholeness, completeness, welfare

The word

שָׁלוֹם (shalom) is one of the most familiar Hebrew words in any language. It appears more than 230 times across the Hebrew Bible, in narrative, prophecy, psalmody, and wisdom literature. It is the standard Hebrew greeting (and remains so in modern Hebrew), the standard inquiry after another’s wellbeing (“Is it shalom with you?”), and a common formula in covenant and treaty contexts.

The word derives from the verbal root שׁלם (sh-l-m), which carries an underlying sense of being complete, being whole, being sound. Different verbal stems of the same root express related ideas: being at peace, being finished, being repaid, being made whole.

Range of meaning

HALOT s.v. שָׁלוֹם documents a wide semantic field. The noun covers, in different contexts:

• Completeness, soundness — the underlying root meaning
• Welfare, well-being — as in greetings (“How is your shalom?” = “How are you?”)
• Health — physical wholeness
• Prosperity — material flourishing
• Right relationships — peace between persons or groups
• Absence of conflict — peace as opposed to war

English “peace” captures only the last two senses well. The first four are present in Hebrew but get lost in translation. When the Hebrew Bible says someone “went in peace” (Genesis 26:31, 1 Samuel 1:17), it does not mean only “without violence” — it means with their whole welfare intact.

In greetings

The standard Hebrew greeting is shalom — used both as “hello” and “goodbye,” and used in inquiries after welfare. The Aramaic cognate shlama (שְׁלָמָא) plays a similar role in Aramaic-speaking contexts, and the Arabic cognate salaam (سلام) is the parallel greeting in Arabic. All three derive from the same Semitic root.

In the Hebrew Bible, asking after someone’s shalom is a stock formula. When David sends Joab’s officers to ask after his son Absalom (2 Samuel 18:32), the question is “Is the young man Absalom shalom?” — asking after his welfare, his condition, his life.

In covenant contexts

The phrase ברית שלום (berit shalom, “covenant of peace”) appears in several places, notably Numbers 25:12 (the covenant with Phinehas) and Ezekiel 34:25 and 37:26. The phrase does not mean only “treaty ending hostilities” — it indicates a relationship of wholeness, mutual obligation, and right standing.

Similarly, shalom offerings (Hebrew זִבְחֵי שְׁלָמִים, zivchei shelamim) are one of the categories of sacrifice in Leviticus 3 and 7. The English rendering “peace offerings” is conventional; “wholeness offerings” or “fellowship offerings” (NIV) capture other facets of the Hebrew sense.

In the Septuagint and New Testament

When the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek (the Septuagint, third to second century BC), shalom is rendered most often as εἰρήνη (eirēnē). The Greek word covers the senses of “peace” and “absence of conflict” but does not have the same breadth as the Hebrew.

The New Testament’s use of eirēnē — particularly in Pauline greetings (“grace and peace”) — is shaped by the Hebrew background as much as by the Greek. When Paul writes “the peace of God which surpasses all understanding” (Philippians 4:7), the underlying conceptual range includes the Hebrew sense of integrated welfare, not only the Greek sense of cessation of hostilities.

What the translation flattens

The single English word “peace” is doing a lot of work when it stands in for shalom. Most English translations have settled on it because the alternatives (“welfare,” “wholeness,” “soundness”) are clunkier or sound archaic. But it is worth knowing that the Hebrew is broader than the English suggests, and that biblical greetings, blessings, and covenant formulae using shalom often invoke the wider range.