Shalom

‘Shalom’ is the Hebrew word for peace, used at meeting, or at a farewell; it conveys the sense of a wish, to mean ‘peace be with you’. It occurs in the Hebrew Bible in various places, as an individual greeting or referring more widely to a general sense of peace and justice. In the New Testament, when Jesus used the phrase ‘peace be with you, or ‘my peace I give to you’, he was using the concept implied in the word Shalom. It occurs with other Hebrew words: thus ‘Shalom Aleikhem’ (‘Peace be upon you’) is the first hymn sung before the Sabbath evening meal on Friday night. See ‘Jewish Sabbath hymns’*. The sound of ‘Shalom’ is very beautiful in itself, and the meanings that have accrued to it...