What Does 1 Kings 22:44 Mean?
And Jehoshaphat made wholeness with the king of Israel.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And Jehoshaphat made peace with the king of Israel.THE KEY
Peace here is something made between distinct parties: shalom is relational wholeness, not merely a private feeling.
THE MEANING
The verse presents wholeness as something that can exist between people who remain distinct: Jehoshaphat’s peace is with Israel’s king. It speaks now to the reader’s relationships, showing peace as a condition in the space between people as well as within them.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that peace is only inner calm; here, peace is made between two parties.
THE ROOT
שָׁלוֹם
shalom
GROWS FROM
שׁ־ל־ם
sh-l-m
To be whole, complete, or intact.
The verse says Jehoshaphat makes shalom with another ruler: wholeness takes form in a relationship between them. English “peace” can sound like a state of mind, while shalom also carries the sense of things being whole and intact.
ALSO GROWS
shalem: whole, complete
שָׁלֵם
This branch makes the wholeness within shalom visible.
shillem: to repay or make restitution
שִׁלֵּם
This branch links the same root with restoring what is owed, another way a relationship can be brought back toward wholeness.
יְהוֹשָׁפָט
Yehoshafat
GROWS FROM
שׁ־פ־ט
sh-p-t
The root shaphat means to judge or govern; the name means “YHWH has judged.”
“Jehoshaphat” in this verse is Yehoshafat. The name carries judgment into a verse about making peace. The verse holds judgment and relational wholeness in the same scene without saying that one erases the other.
ALSO GROWS
shofet: judge
שֹׁפֵט
This branch names the one who judges, echoing the judgment carried in Jehoshaphat’s name.
mishpat: judgment, justice
מִשְׁפָּט
This branch shows how the name’s root extends from judging to the ordering of a matter.
THE PATTERN
Wholeness becomes visible when distinct parties enter a bond that changes the relationship between them.
And they rose early in the morning, and swore to one another, and Isaac sent them away, and they went away from him in wholeness.For he is our wholeness, the one who made both one and loosed the middle wall of the fence.And, having made wholeness through the blood of his cross, through him to bring all things back to himself, whether the things on the earth or the things in the heavens.THE THREAD
And the LORD gave Solomon wisdom, as he had spoken to him, and there was wholeness between Hiram and Solomon, and the two of them cut a covenant.Both verses use שָׁלוֹם (shalom), meaning peace and wholeness, for the relationship between two rulers. The second verse makes the bond visible in a league, showing how this peace exists between them rather than only within either one.
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