What's In a Name? Sar Shalom -- The Prince of Peace

hannemoon61
12 minutes ago
7 min read

The advent of Messiah was something that the heart of the Israelite people longed for. To be free from the shackles of Rome, to be free from the tyranny and pettiness of leaders and fake kings, to be unshackled from the onerous burdens that the Temple hierarchy seemed to impose over and above what Torah taught, all in the name of putting a “fence” around His rulings so that one was sure not to offend G-d. To finally reclaim the dignity, honor, and abundance of the Davidic Kingdom once and for all – this was the hope of the Jewish people.

But Messiah didn’t come quite as expected…

This child’s birth as proclaimed by the angels to the shepherds in the countryside outside of Beit-Lechem was one of great news that was to bring joy to all people as these beings blessed the earth with greetings of peace to all men, greetings that came to us from the Throne Room of G-d. He was to be a Deliverer, the promised Messiah of David’s lineage. He was to be the Wonderful Counselor, Mighty G-d, Everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:5 in Hebrew Bibles, 9:6 in Christian Bibles)

This Prince of Peace was to be the essence of Almighty G-d and the Everlasting Father. He was to reflect the divine nature of G-d. But was He more than that?

Was He really G-d in the flesh?

Shalom

The word peace in Hebrew is שָׁלוֹם or “shalom.” But the peace of shalom is not what we in the western world think of peace. Peace to us is the absence of conflict. But even in the absence of conflict there can be tension and disquiet. Shalom, on the other hand, is so much more than that. Shalom is the condition of peace and relates to the condition of the world and mankind as it was in the Garden of Eden, in total harmony with all creation. It correlates to the word שָׁלֵם shalem and to the word שְׁלֵמוּת shleimut. Both of these words mean a wholeness, a completeness, a serenity of the entirety.

As Ben Burton says it so succinctly on his Ladder of Jacob website, “[i]t connotes the idea that in one’s complete being, in every aspect of life, there is complete harmony, balance, filled to the fulness lacking nothing.” It is the integrity of wholeness.

What is the one complete entity in the whole of the universe and beyond? Isn’t it G-d? In fact, the Zohar states that G-d is the very definition of peace. Isaac ben Moses Arama, a Spanish rabbi of the 15^th century, paraphrased this idea of G-d as peace in this way:

Peace is a positive thing, the essential means by which men of differing temperaments and opinions can work together for the common good. Pearls of individual virtue would be dim in isolation were it not for the string of peace that binds them together and so increases their luster. That is why peace is a name of G-d for it is He who gives unity to the whole of creation.

Then we go to Proverbs 3:13, 17- 18 which states:

Happy is the man who finds wisdom and the man who gains understanding….Her ways are pleasant ways, and all her paths are shalom. She is a tree of life to those who embrace her, and blessed will be all who hold firmly to her. (TLV)

What else besides wisdom is known as the Tree of Life? The rabbis say that the Torah is the Tree of Life. What Proverbs is saying here is that pursuing the Torah will give us shalom, will give us completeness and unity of mind, heart, and soul.

But if we keep reading down, what else does this chapter say in verses 19-20?

By wisdom Adonai founded the earth. By understanding He established the heavens. By His knowledge the deeps were divided, and the clouds drip dew.

We know that Wisdom is often portrayed as a personification or one of the many faces of G-d, the Ruach H’kodesh, or Messiah. In Proverbs 8, Wisdom is given a voice. She was present with G-d before the creation of the world. Proverbs 8:22-31 states:

“Adonai brought me forth,

the first of His way,

before His works of old.

From eternity I was appointed

from the beginning, before the world began.

When there were no depths, I was brought forth,

when there were no fountains abounding with water.

Before the mountains were shaped,

before the hills, I was brought forth.

He had not yet made the land,

the fields, or the first dust of the earth.

When He set the heavens in place, I was there.

When He inscribed the horizon on the face of the ocean,

when He established the skies above,

when He securely fixed the fountains of the deep,

when He set the boundaries for the sea,

so that the waters never transgress His command,

when He laid out earth’s foundations—

then I was the craftsman beside Him,

I was His daily delight, always rejoicing before Him,

rejoicing in His whole world, and delighting in mankind. (TLV)

If you’ve read the Gospel of John in the Brit Hadashah, is this beginning to sound familiar? Let’s go to the first chapter of John’s gospel, verses 1-5, 14:

In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God.He was with God in the beginning. All things were made through Him, and apart from Him nothing was made that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overpowered it….And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us. We looked upon His glory, the glory of the one and only from the Father, full of grace and truth. (TLV)

Let’s go from point to point…

1. Peace or shalom is the name of G-d.

2. Shalom is wisdom.

3. The Torah is equated with wisdom as the Tree of Life, and Torah gives us the shalom of HaShem.

4. But Wisdom is also a facet of G-d that was before the creation of the world and participated in that creation. We know that G-d spoke creation into existence; by His Word everything came into being.

5. It was the Word of G-d, described in the opening chapter of the Gospel of John, who was personified in Messiah whom we know as Yeshua, the One who came to earth and dwelt among his creation.

Let’s go back to the Isaiah 9:5 passage which gives us this verse:

For a child is born to us,

a son is given to us;

dominion will rest on his shoulders,

and he will be given the name

Pele-Yo‘etz El Gibbor

Avi-‘Ad Sar-Shalom

[Wonder of a Counselor, Mighty G-d,

Father of Eternity, Prince of Peace] (CJB)

According to the Jews for Jesus website, the passages of Chapters 7 through 12 of Isaiah speaks to a future that the prophet sees, a time of unequalled prosperity, wisdom, and peace. This type of kingdom was NEVER fulfilled by any king of Israel. It is still awaiting fulfillment as no government has achieved such a community.

So this child is given these names. Now in Hebrew, names are not simply designations. They’re not given because they sound “good” or “interesting. Names in Hebrew, according to Rabbi Dr. Itzhak Shapira in his book The Return of the Kosher Pig, are quite important as they describe the attributes of the person. And look at the verse again... “and he will be given THE name (emphasis mine).” This isn’t a series of names, this is ONE name – Wonder of a Counselor, Mighty G-d, Father of Eternity, Prince of Peace. This child is ALL these things.

What does the next verse of Isaiah 9 tell us?

in order to extend the dominionand perpetuate the peaceof the throne and kingdom of David,to secure it and sustain itthrough justice and righteousnesshenceforth and forever.The zeal of Adonai-Tzva’otwill accomplish this. (Isaiah 9:6 CJB)

This Prince of Peace will extend the dominion and bring the peace of the kingdom and throne of David. He will secure it and sustain it through justice and righteousness, henceforth and forever. That is the very definition of Messiah.

But verse 6 has a deeper meaning – the divinity of Messiah is encoded in the very first word. לם‪ רבה

In Hebrew, some letters have a final form when they come at the end of a word. The letter mem (the second letter of the word – read properly from right to left) is one such letter. In the middle of the word, the letter mem is open, like this...

The bottom line does not connect to the left side of the letter. But a closed mem, as in the word l’marbah above, only comes at the END of a word. This passage in Isaiah is the ONLY place that a closed mem is seen in the middle of a word. Did Isaiah just suddenly forget how to write in Hebrew? Of course not!

The sages say the regular letter mem represents the manifestation of the Kingdom of G-d that we can see and observe by our senses according to Rabbi Dr. Itzhak Shapira. It represents the hand of G-d that is manifested in the world every day.

According to Rabbi Ben-Tzion Bar Ami, “the letter mem equals 40 which is the clue for creation. The newborn remains 40 weeks in his mother’s womb, 40 days and 40 nights for the flood, 40 years in the desert, and 40 days for receiving of the Torah. The number 40 represents the renewal of the world. In addition, the letter mem relates to the word mayim (water), which gives life to everything. The letter mem also represents the word Messiah.

Rabbi Dr. Itzhak Shapira says that it is clear that the letter mem represents the Messiah who gives the living waters that provide the answer to our human desires. (And there is only one person who referred to himself as the giver of living waters! Yeshua!)

The closed mem, according to Shapira, represents the layer of the Kingdom of G-d that we can’t fully understand or see and the sages go even further to suggest that the reason for the mem in the middle of this word is that the Messiah will be born from a rechem satum (a closed womb) by a virgin who never knew a man.

This scripture from Isaiah is stating that Messiah will come into the world supernaturally because his origins are related to “heavenly” water,” which is related to the Holy Spirit. Messiah will appear in the world, in both earthly and heavenly manifestations. Clearly a divine Messiah was encoded in this verse of Isaiah.

And since Daniel stated that the destruction of Jerusalem would come AFTER Messiah was cut off (Daniel 9:26), we know that Messiah has come. The only person who has ever fulfilled the messianic prophesies of scripture is Yeshua.

Scripture clearly shows that Messiah is a heavenly divine King that will reign from Israel over the entire world when He comes again.

Hanne