This adjective describes completeness or wholeness, with the thing described determining what that completeness involves. Deuteronomy 25:15 applies it within the requirement for honest weights and measures: the standard must not be manipulated to a customer's disadvantage.
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Full entry for שָׁלֵם (H8003) · Open the biblical lexicon
This adjective describes completeness or wholeness, with the thing described determining what that completeness involves. Deuteronomy 25:15 applies it within the requirement for honest weights and measures: the standard must not be manipulated to a customer's disadvantage.
The BSB source-word alignment has 28 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include a whole (3), fully devoted (3), . . . (2), and wholeheartedly (2), devotion (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 15:16. Its strongest book concentrations include 1 Kings (5), 2 Chronicles (5), 1 Chronicles (4), Deuteronomy (3).
This adjective describes completeness or wholeness, with the thing described determining what that completeness involves. Deuteronomy 25:15 applies it within the requirement for honest weights and measures: the standard must not be manipulated to a customer's disadvantage. First Kings 8:61 applies it to a heart fully devoted to the Lord, expressed in walking according to His commandments.
Ruth 2:12 places it in Boaz's blessing over the full reward he desires Ruth to receive from the God under whose wings she has taken refuge. Accurate measure, devoted heart and hoped-for reward are related by completeness without becoming identical claims. The adjective does not establish that a worshiper has never sinned or that every faithful worker will receive an immediate material return.
Its contribution must be read together with the noun and the surrounding speech.
Completeness qualifies a commercial standard, a worshiper's heart and a blessing over Ruth's reward. These contexts retain different subjects while connecting integrity, devotion and the fullness being sought.
You must maintain accurate and honest weights and measures, so that you may live long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
Honest weights and measures exclude the deliberate use of differing standards; completeness serves truthful dealings rather than an abstract spiritual perfection claim.
So let your heart be fully devoted to the Lord our God, as it is this day, to walk in His statutes and to keep His commandments.”
Solomon calls the people's hearts to full devotion shown through obedience, within his prayer that all peoples recognize the Lord as God.
May the Lord repay your work, and may you receive a rich reward from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have taken refuge.”
Boaz blesses Ruth with a rich reward from the Lord after naming her care and costly move; the speech is a blessing, not a price list for merit.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. complete (literally or figuratively); especially friendly
complete (literally or figuratively); especially friendly BDB: complete Usage: full, just, made ready, peaceable, perfect(-ed), quiet, Shalem (by mistake for a name), whole.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
First Kings 8:61 calls for a heart fully devoted to the Lord, and explains that devotion through walking in His statutes and keeping His commandments. The appeal belongs to a prayer in which Solomon also addresses sin, forgiveness and renewed seeking of God. Completeness of allegiance must therefore not be turned into a claim that the people will never need mercy.
Deuteronomy applies the adjective to honest measuring equipment, where integrity has an immediately observable effect on a neighbor. Ruth hears it in a blessing for the reward Boaz desires God to give her. These differences help a teacher avoid forcing every instance into spiritual perfection. The shared idea of wholeness serves truthful exchange, wholehearted worship or a prayed-for fullness, as the passage determines.
1Kgs.8.61
As an adjective, the word receives its contextual force from the subject it qualifies. Completeness of a weight is not the same assertion as wholehearted devotion, and neither supplies a technical doctrine of sinlessness.
Israel's honest standards and Solomon's call for full devotion address integrity in distinct settings. Matthew 6:24 likewise challenges divided service to God and money. This is a comparison of allegiance across contexts, not a claim that the Hebrew adjective defines New Testament perfection language or turns wholeheartedness into the basis of justification.