Peace

WHAT DOES THE BIBLE MEAN BY THE WORD "PEACE"?

Dr. Paul Manuel—2001
pdf

Because of the length of this study most of it is available only in this pdf.

Contents

I.		Semantic Range of "Peace" in the Bible	2
	A.	The Hebrew verb
	B.	The Hebrew noun
	C.	The Greek verb
	D.	The Greek noun
II.		Common Uses of "Peace" in the Bible
	A.	Relational Peace
	1.	Interpersonal: harmony between individuals	8
	2.	International: freedom from war	13
	B.	Personal Peace
	1.	Physical: welfare, health, prosperity	22
	2.	Mental: tranquility, confidence, contentment	27
		Appendix: of "Other Verses"	31
		Bibliography	47
		Endnotes	48

After the terrorist attacks on September 11, the notion of peace has come under considerable scrutiny. What is it, and what price are we willing to pay for it? How do we achieve it? ...What comes to mind when you think of "peace"? The Oxford American Dictionary gives five uses of the word in American English (Ehrlich 1980:491):

1. A state of freedom from war, cessation of war
2. A treaty ending a war
3. Freedom from civil disorder
4. Quiet, calm, freedom from anxiety
5. A state of harmony between people, absence of strife

In almost all cases, we use "peace" to mean the absence of something bad: war, disorder, anxiety, strife.

For example, on the international level, peace is the absence of war between otherwise hostile countries, and we label relationships accordingly. Sometimes, peace is not the right term, such as in characterizing our relationship with England. In that case, we say that Great Britain is "a friend" of the US rather than that Great Britain is "at peace" with the US, because the phrase "at peace" does not convey the close ties our country enjoys with England. On the other hand, "at peace" would be an accurate description of our relationship to the Soviet Union, at least before perestroika.

The Greek word for peace is eirene (irenic [adj.] "promoting peace", Irene [PN]). It means much the same as our English word: the absence of conflict. In biblical literature, however, the Greek word comes under the influence of its Hebrew counterpart shalom and the meaning—at least in the LXX and New Testament documents—takes on the significance of the word in the Hebrew Old Testament (Carr 1980 2:931; Beck 1976 2:780; Foerster 1964a 2:406). We will begin with a general survey and ask the question: How does the biblical definition of peace compare with the modern definition?

There is both a verb form and a noun form of this word in Hebrew and Greek. We will focus on the noun, but to show you the similarities I will list the major uses of the verb.¹ ....

For the Study (46 pages) and its Bibliography and Endnotes, see the pdf here.