The Great Physician XI: A Peaceful Childlike Quality

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!