The
Peaceable Kingdom
1833-1834
[Edward
Hicks 1780-1849]
Oil on
canvas
17 7/16 in x
23 9/16 in
Brooklyn
Museum
Shalom. The
final word idea in health and wholeness. The noun shalom may be said to embody
the warmest and most comprehensive vision of health and wholeness in the Old
Testament. The Hebrew word shalom occurs 237 times in the Old Testament. It is
found in three different senses. Its most frequent use is that of material
“well-being and prosperity”. Most often used by modern Jews as a greeting or
goodbye. When Joseph was sent by his father Jacob to check out the shalom of
his brothers and cattle, Joseph was asked to learn about their health, their
physical well-being. He was to find out whether or not they were all okay.
(Genesis 37:14)
Next in
usage is its use with reference to social or political relationships. shalom
used here typically refers to the character of a relationship, such as that
between Tyre and Israel (1 Kings 5:12E) or between a king like Zedekiah and his
supposed friends (Jeremiah 38:22). The third and least used sense in the Hebrew
Bible is its moral sense of “integrity” or “straightforwardness”. It is in this
sense that the Psalmist would instruct us: “Mark the blameless man, and behold
the upright, for there is posterity for the man of shalom (Psalms 37:37).
An important
underlying principle of all three of these meanings of shalom is how it defines
how people, situations, things, should be. It assumes such entities are to be
healthy and whole. At peace with itself, God, others and the world. It other
words shalom is attempting to express the perfection to which the creation
longs to return prior to the curse. A world of being in which every individual
and peoples are full, complete, free of injustice, oppression, pain, and
sickness. A place and time that Revelation 21 promises will exist in the
future.
A world
where social relationships no longer exploit or are exploited for personal or
corporate gain. A world enriched and enhanced. Shalom is that place and state
where Christ rules. A world where humanity and environment are one in harmony
and peace.
Isaiah
65:17-25 anticipates this new creation in which infant mortality will be at an
end, in which people will live in the houses they have built and will eat of
the vineyards in which they have labored, a world where wolf and lamb shall
feed together. Such reassuring words are very close to the equally beautiful
vision of Isaiah 11:6-9, where wolf and lamb, child, and calf are depicted as
dwelling one day side by side in tranquility. This will not be sentimentality.
It will be reality.
Amos 9
speaks of coming days in which the plowman will overtake the reaper and the
treader of grapes the sower, when mountains and hills shall drip and flow with
sweet wine…
“The days
are coming,” declares the Lord, when the reaper will be overtaken by the
plowman and the planter by the one treading grapes. New wine will drip from the
mountains and flow from all the hills…” Amos 9:13
This is
Shalom.
Isaiah
32:16-17 goes on to associate shalom with justice, righteousness, quietness,
and trust. Most picturesquely and dramatically, Isaiah 2:2-4 and Micah 4:1-5
envisions many nations going up to Jerusalem, beating their swords into
plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, with nation no longer warring
against nation, and the people at last enjoying the return of a pre-curse
prosperity. Such is the beatific vision of shalom. Some may reject the Old
Testament here as hopelessly and naively utopian. But this is what the New
Testament promises also when Christ finally reigns in glory.
This of course
will be beneficial to the Hebraic concept of self as it will be conducive to
perfect community. A perfect community being the building block of perfect
self….at rest with itself and its environment.
So, over the
last three posts we have examined three selected concepts of the Old Testament,
which, encapsulated the concept of what Old Testament has to say on the subject
of health and specifically wholeness. The concept of the Hebrew self implies an
insight into the totality and irreducibility of individual and corporate being.
The purpose behind the sabbath is that it is an institution to help us renew
motivation and time new opportunities. The concept of shalom hopefully awakens
in us a longing for and a working toward the most loving unifying vision of all
three. The concepts of “self”, “sabbath” and are only a beginning. In them are
our vital relationships: to self, to others and to God the most vital
relationship of all.
Most people
including Christians find it almost disturbing when systems treat diseased or
handicapped people in a cruel or inhumane way. People with bodily
malformations, skin disorders, blemishes, or those subject to abnormal
bleedings or emissions, or those in recent contact with the dead, were
understood to lack wholeness and were made to experience various degrees of
societal discrimination and exclusion in ancient Israel. These laws were
ceremonial and civil laws to protect man from himself. The ceremonial and civil
laws for Jews were abrogated in Jesus Christ. We see that when Christ came
these effects of the Fall were pushed back on their heels. Jesus brought with
Him the Kingdom. The Kingdom is where the King is and where the King is…there
is Shalom. There is wholeness. There is healing.
The line of
ordained delimitation now extends well outside Hebrew society to Jew and
Gentile alike, involving bond and free, male and female, native and foreigner,
sacral and secular. It is now embodied in the acceptance of Jesus Christ with a
full expectation that at some point in the future, which is imminent, all
disease, sickness, suffering, sorrow and tears will be swallowed up in the
glory that is Christ and his eternal reign.
Addendum:
There was an artist named Edward Hicks (1780-1849). Hicks was self-taught and
the only book he really knew well was the Bible. He was thoroughly preoccupied
with the theme of Isaiah 11:6-9. He painted the same scene twenty-five times in
his life. In one version, The Peaceable Kingdom dated between approximately 1834,
he shares his interpretation of the new world in which all of God’s creatures
live harmoniously. In the immediate foreground we see predators, domestic
animals and innocent small children dwelling together in peace. In the distance
we discern men of all race making peace. It is done in a style called Naïve
Art. It is usually created by a person who lacks the formal education and
training that a professional artist undergoes in things like anatomy, art
history, technique, perspective, ways of seeing, etc. It’s defining and most
endearing characteristic is its often-imitated childlike simplicity and
frankness. The innocence is its appeal. Its peaceful childlike quality. It's
shalom. The painting is a bit idealistic in its vision of our future world and
it is deftly captured in an innocent expression from the past. A shalom sorely
needed in our time. Someday this will come to pass. The Scriptures promise
this. Shalom!
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