by Kenneth F. Sheets
The Hebrew word shälōm and its related forms occur many times in the Hebrew Scriptures. Though this word and its ancient Greek translation eiréné are frequently translated by the word “peace,” or some associated concept, this meaning fails dramatically in conveying the significance which God built into the word. The shälōm of God is not, nor can it be, defined by its relationship to any human condition or, indeed, by any condition of the creation. The infinite Creator Himself is the one who has determined the definition, the nature, the extent, of shälōm, and man, the finite created being, could never begin to produce such a determination, even if all men of all time were able to cooperate in the attempt.
Shälōm describes the entirety of all that corresponds to the person of the Creator in the entirety of His existence. Shälōm, then, is not only rooted in the person of the Creator; it is defined by who and what He is. Its significance cannot be confined to or encompassed by any finite expression or delineation, but, like God Himself, it is constrained only by the entirety of the “Godness” of the infinite God, and its fullness is inexpressible by any noninfinite means. Humans, however, are not infinite in any aspect of their existence, and thus, in a manner somewhat comprehensible by humans, the shälōm of God may be understood as the infinite, complete, and perfect criteria governing every function and interaction of every thing that exists as those criteria are in every way an exact expression of the infinite, complete, and perfect Creator.
Understood in this manner, shälōm is not limited in extent by that which God has revealed of Himself and His design; it extends far beyond to the limitless nature of all that His infinite mind could set forth to describe Himself. His revelation, though it partakes of the perfection of completeness, is related to the ability which He built into the creation to sense and perceive the completeness inherent within that revelation. The creation, humans included, is finite, and God has designed His revelation, both in its means and its content, to provide all of creation with sufficient finite expression of His infinite completeness to enable every being to perceive and properly relate to Him. Revelation, then, may be regarded as the finite, but totally integrated and exact, expression of the infinite Creator.
The finite nature of man, however, precludes his full assimilation and comprehension of the content of God’s finite expressions of Himself. The revelation is far too expansive in its nature and extent for any or all finite beings to even contact its every point, let alone to correlate and comprehend all that it signifies. From the human perspective, such incapability may seem inconsistent with the revelatory purpose of God, but, in reality, it is quite the contrary. The Creator perfectly designed His revelation, in its every aspect, to provide the mind of humans with an accurate representation of Himself and His design, and humans were to receive and correlate to life all the individual points of this accurate representation. Though their understanding would always remain finite in some ways and to some degree, their accurate applications of their accurate perceptions of God and His design would invest their applications with an element of “eternality,” because those accurate applications were expressions of the person and nature of the “eternal” Creator who had designed them.
The content of these accurate perceptions of God’s accurate representation is the content of true wisdom, and this true wisdom has always been available to every human who sought to accurately perceive and comprehend the inescapable revelation in the midst of which he exists. Such individuals always had all that they needed to understand not only the nature and content of shälōm, but also its implications in their relationship to God. Humans cannot escape shälōm, that is, like all beings of creation, humans cannot to any degree restrict or diminish their responsibility and accountability to accurately relate to the Creator and to reflect the reality that everything in the creation exists within and subject to Him and His every expression of His person. Wisdom, then, true wisdom, perfectly and accurately reflects this truth, and every thing or being which does not reflect this truth is in violation of the design of God.
