What Does Isaiah 48:22 Mean?

There is no wholeness, says the LORD, for the restless.

Isaiah 48:22 · SDV

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.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

There is no peace, saith the LORD, unto the wicked.

THE KEY

The verse names a deeper absence than unrest: where wickedness is present, the LORD says there is no shalom, the word for peace that also carries wholeness.

THE MEANING

This verse speaks now as a boundary: the LORD does not name the wicked person’s condition as shalom. The Hebrew word reaches beyond a calm feeling to wholeness and soundness in a life.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

It undoes the belief that outward calm proves a life is whole before the LORD.

THE ROOT

שָׁלוֹם

shalom

GROWS FROM

שׁלם

To be complete, sound, or whole; to make whole or make good.

Shalom carries wholeness and soundness alongside peace, so the verse speaks to more than whether the wicked feel calm. The same root can describe what is complete and what is made good, opening a view of peace as a life made whole.

ALSO GROWS

shalem: Whole, complete, sound.

שָׁלֵם

This branch shows the completeness held within shalom: the verse names that wholeness as absent for the wicked.

shillem: To make good, repay, or recompense.

שִׁלֵּם

This branch connects shalom with making an account complete, revealing a sense of restoration and settledness beyond quiet.

THE PATTERN

Scripture connects peace with the way a life is lived before God, not merely with a passing feeling of calm.

There is no wholeness, says my God, to the wicked.

Isaiah 57:21 · SDVThe same declaration appears again, repeating the link between wickedness and the absence of shalom.

Watch the whole one, and see the straight one, for the end of that man is wholeness.

Psalm 37:37 · SDVHere shalom marks the end of the upright person’s way, setting a positive counterpart beside Isaiah’s statement of its absence.

And the way of wholeness they have not known.

Romans 3:17 · SDVThe verse describes peace as a way that remains unknown to those whose lives are being exposed as crooked.

THE THREAD

Watch the whole one, and see the straight one, for the end of that man is wholeness.

Psalm 37:37 · SDV

The same Hebrew word, ⁨שָׁלוֹם⁩ (shalom, wholeness), marks the end of the upright person’s way. Beside Isaiah’s denial, it shows shalom as the counterpart to wickedness, not merely the absence of disturbance.

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