What Does Psalm 34:14 Mean?
Turn aside from evil and do good; seek wholeness and pursue it.
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
Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.THE KEY
Peace here is not a condition you wait for; it is wholeness you actively seek and pursue.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks of your present path as two linked movements: turning from evil and doing good. Peace is wholeness that you seek and pursue, not merely a quiet moment.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that peace arrives only when conflict disappears: here, wholeness is actively sought and pursued.
THE ROOT
שָׁלוֹם
shalom
GROWS FROM
שלם
sh-l-m
To be complete, whole, or sound.
The same root gives שָׁלֵם (shalem), meaning whole or complete, and שִׁלֵּם (shillem), meaning to make good or repay. So the wholeness pursued here can include restoration, not merely a pause in conflict.
ALSO GROWS
shalem: Whole, complete, sound.
שָׁלֵם
It reveals the completeness within shalom: peace is a state of wholeness.
shillem: Make good, repay, compensate.
שִׁלֵּם
This branch suggests that wholeness can involve restoring what has been damaged or left unsettled.
וְרָדְפֵהוּ
veradfehu
GROWS FROM
רדף
radaph
To chase or pursue.
“pursue” in this verse is veradfehu. The verb comes from the root for chasing. Joined to “seek,” it pictures peace as something actively searched for and run after, rather than passively awaited.
ALSO GROWS
rodef: Pursuer, chaser.
רֹדֵף
It makes the force of “pursue it” concrete: the seeker becomes a chaser of wholeness.
nirdaf: Pursued, chased, persecuted.
נִרְדָּף
The same root can describe being chased; here the verse turns that motion toward peace as the thing pursued.
THE PATTERN
Wholeness takes shape through active pursuit and practices that turn away from evil toward good.
These are the things you shall do. Speak each man the truth to his neighbor, and judge the judgment of truth and wholeness in your gates.Let love be without a mask. Recoil from what is evil; cling to what is good.Pursue wholeness with all, and the setting apart, without which no one will perceive the LORD.THE THREAD
These are the things you shall do. Speak each man the truth to his neighbor, and judge the judgment of truth and wholeness in your gates.Zechariah uses the same Hebrew word שָׁלוֹם (shalom), meaning wholeness, alongside truth and just judgment. That places the wholeness pursued here in shared public life as well as personal experience.
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