at ease: settled and undisturbed, comfortable enough that nothing feels threatening
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong
This word describes a condition rather than an action: a person, a people, or a place with nothing pressing in on it. Job uses it of the comfortable life he had before God shattered him. Jeremiah uses it of a desert nation living without gates or bars, so settled that it never thought to build them. Chronicles and Zechariah use it of open country and of a city, broad and quiet with no trouble on it. The picture is the same every time: enough in hand, and no threat in view.
That is why the same word so easily turns into an accusation. Ease is pleasant, and it is also blind. The psalmist points at people who are permanently comfortable and grows bitter about it, Job complains that the wicked die untroubled at the height of their strength, and Ezekiel sets the word beside a crowd's drunken revelry. Nothing in the word itself condemns anyone, though: Job applies it to his own former comfort with no hint of blame. The judgment comes from what the writer builds around it, and in the prophets the ease of a nation is usually the reason it is about to be overrun.
Hebrew has several words in this neighborhood, and they are not interchangeable:
The noun of this same family (שַׁלְוָה) names the undisturbed quiet itself, and the verb (שָׁלָה) names being in that state.
שָׁקַט is the quiet that comes after upheaval, the rest a land gets when the fighting finally stops.
בֶּטַח is safety resting on something trusted, which is why Jeremiah 49:31 can stack the two together: a nation at ease, living in confidence.
שַׁאֲנָן is comfortable ease that has hardened into settled smugness, the attitude the prophets attack by name.
Nuances
1aof a person or a people: living undisturbed, with nothing pressing in on them
Job 16:12Job 21:23Psa 73:12Jer 49:31Ezk 23:42*
1bof a land or a city: settled and quiet, with no trouble on it
TranslatabilityDirect
1Ch 4:40Zec 7:7
1cused as a thing rather than as a description: the untroubled quiet a person has inside
CertaintyContested
Job 20:20*
Job 20:20
Whether שָׁלֵו in Job 20:20 is this adjective used substantivally ("quietness") or the cognate noun of the same root, and how the resulting colon should be construed.
majorityThe adjective functions as a substantive: "he knew no quietness in his belly," that is, his appetite left him no inner rest.; BDB, s.v. שָׁלֵו
minorityThe form is better taken as (or corrected to) the cognate noun for ease, since the adjective is not otherwise used substantivally.; HALOT, s.v. שָׁלֵו; David J. A. Clines, Job 1-20, Word Biblical Commentary 17
This is the word that pins the calm onto something and calls it that, whether the something is a country, a city, a crowd, or a single person. Simeon's clans found pasture in a land that was broad and undisturbed; a raiding order goes out against a nation living undisturbed, with no gates and no bars to shut; Jerusalem and the towns around her were settled and undisturbed while the earlier prophets were still preaching; and the noise of an untroubled crowd is what fills a scene of shameless revelry.1Ch 4:40Jer 49:31Zec 7:7Ezk 23:42
Because it sticks to the person, it supplies the "before" half of a reversal, or a verdict on how someone is faring right now. Job says he was undisturbed when God broke him apart and set him up as a target; one man dies with his life wholly untouched and comfortable; and a psalmist looks at the wicked, permanently undisturbed, with their wealth still growing.Job 16:12Job 21:23Psa 73:12
Both
Both name the same untroubled comfort of nothing pressing in, and neither passes a verdict on its own. The same calm is Jerusalem's good, settled life while the earlier prophets were still preaching to her, and the quiet a pilgrim asks God to put inside her palaces; it is also the permanent comfort of the wicked whose wealth keeps growing, and the settled ease of fools that turns out to be the very thing that kills them. Context decides, not the word.Zec 7:7Psa 73:12Psa 122:7Pro 1:32
Both stand in the same company, right next to the language of safety and peace, which is why English versions reach for overlapping words for either one. The nation called undisturbed is in the same breath said to be living in confidence with nothing to bar its gates, and the quiet asked for Jerusalem's palaces is asked alongside peace for her walls.Jer 49:31Psa 122:7
They come closest in one place, where the describing word is pressed into naming the condition outright. The greedy man in Job knew no quiet at all inside him, and that quiet he never had is exactly what the other word means in the house where a dry crust is eaten in peace.Job 20:20Pro 17:1
Because it names the calm itself, it can be weighed, asked for, or set down as one item in a list. Proverbs puts quiet in the scales against a house full of feasting and quarreling and finds a dry crust eaten in quiet worth more; a pilgrim prayer asks for it inside Jerusalem's palaces in the same breath as peace for her walls; and Ezekiel writes it into the charge against Sodom, beside pride and plenty of food. Nobody is ever wished the other word, and it never gets itemized like this.Pro 17:1Psa 122:7Ezk 16:49
Naming the condition also lets the calm itself take the lead in a sentence. It becomes a stretch of time a person is addressed in, since God says he spoke to Jerusalem all through her untroubled years and heard back, "I will not listen," and it becomes the thing that acts, since the comfortable ease of fools is what destroys them.Jer 22:21Pro 1:32
It can state the circumstances an action is carried out in, which the other word never does. Three times in Daniel a ruler moves in untroubled calm: he takes a kingdom by flattery, he reaches the richest provinces, and he destroys many, in each case before anyone braces for it. This is the use behind the older rendering "peaceably" and the newer "without warning."Dan 11:21Dan 11:24Dan 8:25
שָׁלָהthe verb of this same family: to be at ease, to have an easy time of it
It describes whole countries and towns as settled and undisturbed, a plain background fact about a place rather than anyone's fortune: the pasture Simeon's clans found lay in a land that was broad, quiet and undisturbed; a raiding order is issued against a nation living undisturbed with no doors and no bars to shut; and Jerusalem with the towns around her was inhabited and undisturbed while the earlier prophets were preaching.1Ch 4:40Jer 49:31Zec 7:7
It names a settled comfort a person actually held, so it supplies the earlier picture that a disaster then ruins: Job says he was undisturbed when God broke him apart and set him up as a target.Job 16:12
It can stand as a label for someone's whole condition, or even for the contentment itself rather than the person who has it: a man dies with his life wholly untouched and undisturbed, a greedy man never knows any contentment inside him, and the noise of a carefree crowd is what fills a scene of shameless revelry.Job 21:23Job 20:20Ezk 23:42
Both
Both cover the same ground, being left alone by trouble and therefore doing well, which is why English versions swing between "at ease" and "prosper" for either one: the tents of robbers stand undisturbed while honest people suffer, and the wicked stay permanently undisturbed while their wealth keeps growing.Job 12:6Psa 73:12
Neither word passes a verdict of its own. The same undisturbed condition is the good, quiet life Jerusalem had while the earlier prophets were still preaching to her, and it is equally the unbothered life of everyone who deals treacherously.Jer 12:1Zec 7:7
This word states being undisturbed as something that happens to a person, so it can be asked for or flatly denied. A pilgrim song prays that those who love Jerusalem go untroubled, chiming with the "peace" the same verse asks for the city, and Job denies that any such quiet ever reached him, naming it beside being still and being at rest just before trouble arrived. The describing word of this family is never wished on anyone that way.Psa 122:6Job 3:26
Here the untroubled life is what God's own dealings have brought about, which is exactly what turns it into a grievance to take up with him. Jeremiah brings his case to the LORD and asks why everyone who deals treacherously goes unbothered, and Lamentations says plainly that the foes of Zion are the ones now doing well, because the LORD afflicted her for her many rebellions.Jer 12:1Lam 1:5
שָׁקַטquiet as the settling down of turmoil, the rest a land gets once the fighting stops
Names comfort that already has plenty in hand, so it sits naturally beside wealth and a satisfied appetite: people permanently at their ease while their riches grow, a man who dies at the height of his strength with nothing troubling him, a greedy man who never felt this kind of contentment in his own belly.Psa 73:12Job 21:23Job 20:20
Describes a standing condition rather than trouble stopping. Nothing has to have happened first, and when disaster does come the sentence has to supply it with a separate verb: Job says he was comfortable and then God shattered him. It is the ordinary word for how a city or a nation simply was, settled and unbothered, before anything changed.Job 16:12Zec 7:7Jer 49:31
Both
Both describe a stretch of land with nothing pressing on it, and they overlap closely enough that a writer can stack them in one breath. The scouts looking for pasture found rich grazing in a wide country that was, in their report, both quiet and undisturbed.1Ch 4:40
Names turmoil coming to a stop, which is why it can be commanded, given as a gift, refused, or declared impossible: a frightened king is told to keep calm, God gives a person relief from bad days, the prophet says he will not stay quiet about Jerusalem, and the wicked are like a sea that cannot settle.Isa 7:4Psa 94:13Isa 62:1Isa 57:20
Measures peace as a stretch of time that follows fighting. It is the standard way the histories close a war, counting off the years the country got afterward, and the prophets use it the same way for a whole earth that has finally stopped shaking.Jos 11:23Jdg 3:11Jdg 8:28Isa 14:7
Works for anything stirred up that goes still, including things with no comfort in view at all: churning water that will not settle, a quarrel cooled by someone slow to anger, God's own anger spent and gone quiet, wine left standing undisturbed on its dregs.Jer 49:23Pro 15:18Ezk 16:42Jer 48:11
בֶּטַחsafety that rests on something trusted, so it names confidence rather than comfort
Reports how comfortable and undisturbed someone actually is, with no protector anywhere in view: the easy life Job had before God broke him, and the wicked who stay comfortable and keep getting richer.Job 16:12Job 21:23Psa 73:12
Can be said of a place itself, describing the land or the city as quiet and untroubled rather than describing how its people live: pasture found broad and good, or Jerusalem and its towns back when nothing pressed on them.1Ch 4:40Zec 7:7
Both
Both name a life with nothing to fear, close enough that one line can stack them: a nation "that dwells at ease" and also "dwells securely".Jer 49:31
Neither word promises the calm will last. In the one verse where they stand together, the undisturbed people being described are exactly the people God is calling an army up against.Jer 49:31
Names safety that rests on someone else doing the protecting, which is why it is the word God uses when he promises a gathered people that they will live unafraid with nothing to frighten them.Jer 32:37Ezk 34:25Lev 26:5
Goes with the plain verbs of daily life, so it says how a person carries on rather than what sort of person he is: he lies down to sleep, walks his road, and works his land without fear.Psa 4:8Pro 3:23Lev 25:18
Carries a second color the other word never takes: the confidence of a town or a great power that reckoned itself out of reach, whether it is a city overrun while it thought no one could touch it or an empire telling itself that no one else counts.Gen 34:25Jdg 18:7Isa 47:8Zep 2:15
שַׁאֲנָןcomfortable ease that has hardened into smugness, the settled unconcern the prophets attack
It leans toward thriving rather than merely being undisturbed: good pasture and roomy land, a city inhabited and doing well, wealth that keeps growing. It describes plenty, not just quiet.1Ch 4:40Zec 7:7Psa 73:12
It can describe quiet felt inside a person rather than safety around them: the greedy man who never knows any settledness within, and the man who dies whole and wholly at peace.Job 20:20Job 21:23
It often names the calm of the moment before it is smashed, measuring what someone had while it lasted: a man untroubled until God broke him, a nation living behind no gates that is summoned to be attacked, a carefree crowd whose noise fills a city already sentenced.Job 16:12Jer 49:31Ezk 23:42
Both
Both mean living without anything pressing on you, and both are rendered "at ease" or "secure" in English, whether of a bystander watching another man's ruin or of a man describing the life he had before it collapsed.Job 12:5Job 16:12
Both describe whole nations settled and untroubled, and in both cases that settledness turns out to be no protection once God moves against them.Zec 1:15Jer 49:31
Both can carry a guilty edge, naming comfort held by people who have no business being comfortable: those lounging in Zion, and the wicked who are always untroubled and only get richer.Amo 6:1Psa 73:12
This is the word the prophets aim at people whose comfort is itself the charge against them. The ease is not background detail but the reason judgment is announced, and it is often spoken straight at those who hold it.Amo 6:1Isa 32:9Isa 32:11Zec 1:15
It ties the comfort to contempt for people who are suffering. The one who is untroubled looks down on the ruined and mocks them, so the word carries a sneer that the other word never does.Job 12:5Psa 123:4
It can name the swagger of a foreign king, a self-assurance that has hardened into insolence and that God says has reached his own ears.2Ki 19:28Isa 37:29
It is also the word for the untroubled home God promises ahead, a resting place and a tent whose pegs are never pulled up, so the same word covers both a comfort worth condemning and a peace worth hoping for.Isa 32:18Isa 33:20
שָׁלוֹםwholeness and well-being, a far wider word that overlaps this one only at the edges
Only ever describes what someone or something is already like when nothing is pressing on them: a land nobody is fighting over, a crowd with no cares. It is never handed to anyone, wished on anyone, or asked after, which is the clearest sign that despite the similar look in English spelling this is not the word for peace and does not belong to that family of words.1Ch 4:40Ezk 23:42
Often marks the calm that is about to be smashed. Job says he was untroubled right up to the moment God broke him, and a nation living carefree with no gates and no bars is named as easy prey for the army being summoned against it.Job 16:12Jer 49:31
Can be the scandal itself, not a blessing: the untroubled comfort of the wicked, who pile up wealth without a care, and the greedy man who for all his ease never had any real calm inside him.Psa 73:12Job 20:20
Both
Both can describe a stretch of settled life with no enemy pressing in, a place where people live and lie down unafraid.Zec 7:7Lev 26:61Sa 7:14
Both can report that one person is doing fine, whether that is a man dying quietly with his strength still in him or a father reported to be well when his sons are asked about him.Job 21:23Gen 43:28
Works as everyday speech between people: the ordinary way of asking whether someone is all right ("is it well with him?") and of sending someone off ("go in peace").Gen 29:6Gen 43:27Exo 4:181Sa 25:6
Is something one party gives to another, and above all something God grants and blesses people with, so it can be promised, put in a blessing, and even sworn as a lasting agreement.Num 6:26Lev 26:6Num 25:12
Names the settlement that ends a fight: terms offered to a city before a siege, an agreement sworn between former enemies, quiet holding between two peoples who had been at war.Deu 20:10Jos 9:151Sa 7:14
Means coming through whole, not merely being left undisturbed: dying full of years and gathered to your family, or getting home from a long journey with everything intact.Gen 15:15Gen 28:21
Names the carefree security of the prosperous, often the complacent ease of the wicked who feel untouchable, a settledness Scripture frequently views with suspicion.Psa 73:12Job 21:23Job 20:20
Can describe a nation dwelling secure and unguarded, confident that no one will trouble it.Jer 49:31
Both
Both picture a calm, undisturbed condition free of turmoil, a place or people at rest rather than in conflict.Psa 35:201Ch 4:40Zec 7:7
Describes a peaceable person as harmless toward others: the quiet, settled folk who wish no one ill and so become the easy targets of schemers.Psa 35:20
shalev in the other biblical languages
ἀμέριμνοςGreek“untroubled”the Greek word for having no worries, which locates the ease in a person's mind rather than in an untroubled outward situation
Describes an outward situation, and can be said of a place rather than a person: open country good enough to settle in, and a city with no trouble on it.1Ch 4:40Zec 7:7
The ease normally rests on having plenty and on being out of reach of any threat: a desert people so settled that they built neither gates nor bars, and the full life Job enjoyed before it broke apart.Jer 49:31Job 16:12
Because that comfort is visible from outside, writers use the word to accuse: the permanently comfortable wicked the psalmist resents, people who die untroubled at full strength, and a crowd whose ease sits next to its drinking.Psa 73:12Job 21:23Ezk 23:42
Both
Both name a settled absence of trouble rather than anything a person does, which is why English Bibles reach for the same phrases either way, "at ease" and "free from care". Job looks back on the untroubled stretch of his life, and Paul wants believers in that untroubled condition.Job 16:121Co 7:32
The Hebrew word touches the Greek word's inner sense in one hard line, where it names a quiet a greedy man never had within him, which is close to the freedom from worry the guards are promised.Job 20:20Mat 28:14
Puts the freedom from trouble inside a person's head: what is missing is the worrying itself, not the trouble. Paul wants believers to carry no anxious concern (1 Corinthians 7:32), and the guards are told they will not have to worry about what the governor does with their story (Matthew 28:14).1Co 7:32Mat 28:14
Says nothing about a person's circumstances being comfortable, and can even be promised in the middle of a mess: the soldiers at the tomb are in real danger of punishment and are assured anyway that they need not be anxious.Mat 28:14
Both times it is a state someone is urged into or arranged for, not a condition simply observed: the leaders undertake to make the guards worry free (Matthew 28:14), and Paul recommends a way of life for the sake of it (1 Corinthians 7:32).Mat 28:141Co 7:32
ἤρεμοςGreek“quiet”the Greek word for an undisturbed, quiet life, close to how this word describes a settled land or city
It is used of territory and of a city: land broad and undisturbed with nobody troubling it, and Jerusalem in the days when it sat at ease with its towns around it.1Ch 4:40Zec 7:7
It readily turns into an accusation, naming people whose permanent comfort the writer resents or condemns: the wicked who are always at ease and keep growing richer, and the man who dies untroubled at the height of his strength.Psa 73:12Job 21:23
It names the settled comfort a person had just before disaster fell, so the ease is remembered from the far side of ruin.Job 16:12
It can describe a nation so untroubled that it never bothered with defenses, living without gates or bars, which in the prophets is the reason it is about to be overrun.Jer 49:31
Both
Both words name a settled condition rather than an action: nothing is pressing in from outside, and life simply goes on undisturbed. The Greek word is the closest New Testament counterpart to the Hebrew word where the Hebrew describes people living without trouble on them.1Ch 4:401Ti 2:2
In both places the word is paired with a second word for calm, doubling the same idea instead of adding a new one: the land is "quiet" and at ease, and the life is quiet and "peaceable".1Ch 4:401Ti 2:2
The quiet is something Christians ask God for rather than a state a writer simply observes: Paul tells his readers to pray for kings and everyone in authority so that this undisturbed life becomes possible.1Ti 2:2
The calm here exists for the sake of faithful living, not for comfort: the quiet life Paul wants is one lived out "in all godliness and dignity", so the absence of disturbance is the setting for reverent public behavior.1Ti 2:2
It describes a whole course of living, an entire way of going through life without interference, rather than the condition of a place or a moment of comfort.1Ti 2:2
What scholars say about shalev
An adjective (also spelled שָׁלֵיו) from the root שׁלה / שׁלו, standing alongside the verb שָׁלָה (H7951) and the nouns שַׁלְוָה (H7962) and שֶׁלֶו (H7959). BDB, HALOT, and DCH agree on the sense "quiet, at ease, carefree," and each separates the use of persons and peoples (Job 16:12; 21:23; Jeremiah 49:31;Ezekiel 23:42;Psalm 73:12) from the use of land or city (1 Chronicles 4:40;Zechariah 7:7), where the adjective stands in the feminine beside שֹׁקֶטֶת and יֹשֶׁבֶת. Job 21:23 pairs the adjective with שַׁלְאֲנָן (H7946), generally treated as a byform of שַׁאֲנָן, which places the word squarely in the security-and-unconcern field; Jeremiah 49:31 pairs it with יוֹשֵׁב לָבֶטַח. The plural construct שַׁלְוֵי עוֹלָם of Psalm 73:12 is usually rendered "always at ease," the wisdom complaint about the untroubled prosperity of the wicked that Hossfeld and Zenger treat at length. The one real crux is Job 20:20, where the form functions as a substantive: BDB glosses it "quietness," while others prefer the cognate noun or a correction of the text, and Clines surveys the options. Ezekiel 23:42 is textually damaged, so the adjective's syntax there is uncertain even though its sense is not.
Sources
HALOT, s.v. שָׁלֵוlexicon
BDB, s.v. שָׁלֵוlexicon
DCH, s.v. שָׁלֵוlexicon
TWOT, s.v. שָׁלָהtheological-dictionary
David J. A. Clines, Job 1-20, Word Biblical Commentary 17commentary
Frank-Lothar Hossfeld and Erich Zenger, Psalms 2: A Commentary on Psalms 51-100, Hermeneiacommentary
Walther Zimmerli, Ezekiel 1: A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, Chapters 1-24, Hermeneiacommentary