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PDF FormatIt should not surprise us, therefore, that in numerous passages in the Bible peace means simply victory.19 When in the book of Kings, Solomon orders the execution of Yoav—the former army chief-of-staff who betrayed David and killed a number of his top men—Solomon declares that the blood of Yoav’s victims “shall return upon Yoav’s head and upon that of his offspring forever; whereas to David, and to his offspring, and to his house, and to his throne, there shall be everlasting peace from the Eternal.”20 Solomon understands that peace requires the unequivocal defeat of those who through their disloyalty have endangered the nation’s well-being. Likewise, the saga of David’s war with his son Absalom includes the counsel of Ahitofel to Absalom, urging him to send twelve thousand troops to kill David, through which the people will enjoy “peace.”21 And when a messenger arrives to inform David that the forces of Absalom have been defeated and that the latter himself has been killed, he enters declaring, “Peace! ... Blessed is the Eternal your God who has delivered up the men who raised their hand upon my lord the King!”22
Perhaps the most decisive case of peace as victory appears in the book of Deuteronomy, in which Moses instructs his people in the art of war, prior to their crossing the Jordan:
When you approach a city to conquer it, first call upon it in peace. If they answer in peace, and open to you [their gates], then all the people there shall be for you a levy, and they shall be enslaved to you. And if not... you shall slay every male by the sword.23
In the Jewish view, a conquest that can be achieved without the dedication of resources, risk to one’s soldiers and loss of life among the vanquished that accompany violent conflict is highly preferable to a bloodbath. Yet there is no discounting the fact that here, the call to “peace” refers to a peaceful surrender to invading Jewish forces.24 Not only are conflict and force preserved as legitimate ideas, but it is through their threat that peace is attained.
This principle received its fullest expression during Israel’s greatest period of peace, the reign of Solomon. Of all Israel’s kings, it is Solomon whom the Bible reveres as the greatest of peacemakers. But Solomon’s successes came not through his willingness to compromise with other nations, nor his rejection of the use of force. On the contrary, the most powerful of Israelite kingdoms was built upon military and economic vitality, depicted as the product of Solomon’s wisdom. Consider, for example, the king’s bloodless conquest of Israel’s neighbor to the north, the kingdom of Tyre in southern Lebanon: “And the Eternal granted wisdom to Solomon, as he had promised him; and there was peace between Hiram [king of Tyre] and Solomon, and the two of them signed a treaty. And King Solomon raised a levy of all Israel, and the levy was thirty thousand men. And he sent them to Lebanon, ten thousand per month’s rotation; each would spend one month in Lebanon and two months in his home....”25 Solomon’s understanding of politics led him to conclude that peace along Israel’s northern border required permanently stationing ten thousand men in southern Lebanon, transforming Hiram’s kingdom into a puppet regime. When the time came to build the Temple in Jerusalem, Hiram’s kingdom “volunteered” vast raw materials for the project.26 Hiram’s subordination to Solomon was made even clearer when Hiram himself was summoned to Jerusalem to oversee much of the work: “And King Solomon sent, and took Hiram from Tyre.”27
Indeed, Solomonic Israel flourished to a degree beyond that of any other kingdom in the Bible precisely because it was the dominant military power in the region, and was therefore free of the incessant attacks from hostile neighbors which had plagued the reigns of Saul and David:
And Solomon ruled over all the kingdoms from the river [Euphrates] to the land of Philistia until the border of Egypt; they would bring offerings and serve Solomon all the days of his life.... and he had peace on all sides about him. And Judah and Israel dwelt in security, every man beneath his vine and fig tree, from Dan until Beersheva, all the days of Solomon. And Solomon had forty thousand stalls for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen.28
It was the fortitude of Solomon’s military, his “forty thousand stalls for his chariots and twelve thousand horsemen,” that granted his nation the blessings of a great power, ruling directly or indirectly over the entire region and receiving tribute from the neighboring kings.29 Military security in turn led to unprecedented economic well-being: In Solomon’s Israel, silver and gold were “as common as stones,”30 and “Judah and Israel multiplied like the many sands of the sea, eating, drinking and rejoicing.”31 And it was this sort of peace—the well-being of a nation that dominates its nearby enemies and thereby brings war to an end—that gave birth to the image of “every man beneath his vine and fig tree.” While the phrase is now often used to depict a state of mutual tolerance and avoidance of conflict, the biblical intention is altogether different: Only in a civilization where external threats have been tamed—through the successful use of force, if necessary—can an individual attend properly to his economic, intellectual and spiritual growth, thereby allowing the creative development of the society as a whole.32
Economic, intellectual and spiritual flourishing are in fact integral to the biblical vision of national peace. For the nation as for the individual, peace at bottom means well-being—and like physical security, a healthy economy and a vibrant intellectual and cultural life are crucial components of national well-being. It is for this reason that the concepts of military security and economic health are so closely linked in the Bible: Just as the Psalmist’s “peace at your borders” goes hand-in-hand with an abundance of “the finest of wheat,” the depiction of Solomon’s military might immediately follows the image of Judah and Israel “eating, drinking and rejoicing”—and both lead up to the statement that the kingdom was at peace.
Israel under Solomon was the Bible’s paradigm of a national “peace”—as God tells David explicitly, foretelling Solomon’s life: “Behold, a son shall be born to you... and I shall give him relief from all his enemies around. For his name will be Solomon [Shlomo—a cognate of shalom], and peace and solace I shall bestow upon Israel in his days.”33 And the elements of this paradigm are clear: Military supremacy, reputation and wealth coupled with outstanding religious and cultural achievements.
The interrelationship of all these elements finds its clearest expression in Solomon’s crowning achievement: The construction of the great Temple in Jerusalem. In a letter to Hiram, Solomon writes: “You know about David my father, that he could not build a house in the name of the Eternal his God, due to the wars that surrounded him, until the Eternal could deliver them beneath the soles of his feet. But now, the Eternal has given me rest all around, and there is neither adversary nor evil attacker. So behold, I intend to build a house in the name of the Eternal my God....”34 The Temple was entirely David’s initiative, and it was to a great degree in David’s honor that Solomon undertook the project at all. Yet “due to the wars that surrounded him,” David never had the resources to plan and build such a colossal structure. It was only in the time of his son Solomon, when the brutal wars had been ended by Solomon’s military successes, and the bounty of Tyre and the other surrounding nations furnished the necessary economic strength, that the people Israel could build the Temple, firmly establishing their religious culture in a way that would change the face of Jewish practice forever.
The idea of peace as an all-encompassing national well-being reappears in the book of Hagai, a prophet who witnessed the return of the Jews to the land of Israel, after decades of exile, toward the end of the sixth century B.C.E. Hagai delivered to the Judean governor Zerubavel a vision that was to guide the leadership of the new Jewish state, a vision of national “peace” that included strength, wealth and honor:
For thus says the Eternal of Hosts: It shall come very soon—I will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the land. And I will shake all the nations, and all the nations’ treasures shall come forth, and I shall fill this house with honor, says the Eternal of Hosts. For mine is the silver, mine is the gold, says the Eternal of Hosts. Great shall be the honor of this house ... and in this place I shall bestow peace, says the Eternal of Hosts....
I will shake the heavens and the earth. And I shall overthrow the throne of kingdoms, and I shall destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the nations. I shall overturn the chariots and their riders, and the horses and their riders shall come down, each man by another man’s sword. On that day, says the Eternal of Hosts, I will take you, Zerubavel son of Shalti’el ... and I shall make you as a signet ring, for you I have chosen, says the Eternal of Hosts.35
Hagai, it should be noted, is speaking not of some far-off idea of the end of days, but of the imminent creation of Israel’s Second Commonwealth, the rebuilding of the nation that will include construction of the Second Temple in 517 B.C.E. kingdom of Solomon. Indeed, such an idea of peace as national well-being appears throughout the prophetic texts.
