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PDF FormatFrom the drama of Levite moral obstinacy emerges what is perhaps the principal message of the biblical peace idea: That well-being and righteousness in the long run go hand in hand, that the wicked (nations or individuals) sooner or later must account for their deeds, and that it is the role of the righteous Jew to dedicate his life to the pursuit of justice and morality in a real world that is so often iniquitous.70 Peace is a covenantal reward for the uncompromising righteous, for the Levite who refuses to live with a wicked world—and not for those who are prepared to compromise on justice for the sake of avoiding conflict.71 The biblical man of peace cannot countenance the rejection of force precisely because he understands that the absence of this powerful tool among the virtuous only increases its effectiveness among the evil—and in the long run, the sacrifice of justice for the sake of peace brings neither justice nor peace.
Thus are drawn the battle lines between the biblical and modern ideals: Whereas modern pacifism will assail the Bible as archaic, an embarrassing throwback to a bygone barbarism, the biblical outlook will discard today’s peace paradigm as fundamentally corrupt. It is corrupt because, at its heart, the modern idea sacrifices morality for quiescence, trading in the biblical demand for conflict—for the victory of good over evil, of the righteous over the wicked—for a bucolic kingdom of zoological camaraderie in which debts are forgotten, mercy supplants morality, and humanity is preserved in a pristine brine of tepid quietude.
Of all peoples, it is the Jews who can least afford to discard the lessons of history, those events both tragic and redemptive that have proven time and again the limits of the modern peace idea, the catastrophic outcome of misapplied pacifism, and the need for a rediscovery of the biblical ideal of peace.
R. David Hazony is Managing Editor of Azure.
Notes
1. Numbers 25:1-18. Although the text does not explicitly implicate the entire tribe of Simeon in complicity with the crime, the immediate consequence of Pinhas’ action, even before the divine verdict is handed down, is that “the plague [previously unmentioned] was stopped in Israel, and those who died in the plague were twenty-four thousand.” (Numbers 25:8-9) In the national census that follows in Numbers 26, the tribe of Simeon numbers only 22,200 members, as compared with the earlier census in Numbers 1, when they numbered 59,300. No explanation is given for the drastic—and unparalleled—drop in tribal population. It was probably this which led the rabbis to build their understanding of the Midianite episode around the entire tribe of Simeon. See the account in Sanhedrin 82a.
It was an awareness of the potential for civil war that motivated the rabbis to declare that Pinhas merited the priesthood because he brought “peace among the tribes.” Zevahim 101b.
2. Numbers 25:11-13.
3. Numbers 31:6. The Midianite war is depicted in Numbers 31:1-54.
4. Otto Nathan and Heinz Norden, eds., Einstein on Peace (New York: Schocken, 1960), p. 106. In 1929, Einstein declared that were war to break out, he would “unconditionally refuse all war service, direct or indirect, and would seek to persuade my friends to adopt the same position, regardless of how I might feel about the causes of any particular war.” Nathan and Norden, Einstein, p. 95.
5. UN Charter, Article 2, item 4.
6. Avraham Yassour, ed. Peace: Generation Upon Generation Seeks It and Tramples Upon It (Tel Aviv: Sifriat Po’alim, 1986), p. 32. [Hebrew]
7. President Woodrow Wilson, address to United States Senate, January 22, 1917: “Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor’s terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last.”
8. Cf. Shalom Levin, “The Peace Ideal and the School’s Contribution to its Actualization,” in Rachel Pasternak and Shlomo Tzidkiyahu, eds., A New Era or Losing the Way: Israelis Talk About Peace (Tel Aviv: Eitav, 1994), pp. 251-258. [Hebrew]
9. Genesis 29:6; Genesis 37:14.
10. II Samuel 18:32.
11. Judges 6:23.
12. Esther 2:11.
13. Daniel 10:17-19.
14. II Samuel 11:7. Yoav is the commander of David’s forces.
15. I Chronicles 12:18-19.
16. The term appears five times in the Bible, and its use is always ironic: “Your allies [anshei shlomecha] have turned you and defeated you” (Jeremiah 38:22); “Your allies [anshei shlomecha] have deceived you and defeated you” (Obadiah 1:7); “Even my allies [ish shlomi] whom I relied upon, who ate of my bread, have lifted their heels upon me” (Psalms 41:10—attributed to David); “He has sent his hand against his allies [shlomav], he has broken his covenant” (Psalms 55:21—also attributed to David); “‘Denounce, and we will denounce [God],’ say my allies [kol enosh shlomi] who await my stumbling” (Jeremiah 20:10).
17. Psalms 147:12-14.
18. Psalms 29:11.
19. One way in which the modern idea of compromise and nonviolence has displaced strength as a western virtue is the changed significance of two fingers raised in the air: The signal which as late as World War II meant “victory” only two decades later had come to refer to the modern idea of “peace”—both, of course, mean an end to war, but the difference is quite substantial.
20. I Kings 2:33.
21. II Samuel 17:3. There may also be a veiled reference to Pinhas here—Pinhas’ army in the Midianite war also numbered twelve thousand.
22. II Samuel 18:28.
23. Deuteronomy 20:10-13. Other examples of this usage of “peace” appear in Joshua 10:1, 4; 11:19; II Samuel 10:19; I Chronicles 19:19. It is true that on a shallow level the term “peace” does in fact appear in the extended passage as opposed to “war.” But the opposition is utterly different from today’s usage: “Peace” can be an alternative to war as a means of conquest, and offers potential benefits as well: Not only are a nation’s soldiers safe from harm and its resources preserved, but it can benefit from the enslavement of the city. In other words, whereas the Bible does appear to reject an outlook that glorifies war as an end—an activity which is highly valued independent of its results—the Bible never rejects war as a means of attaining not only minimal national security, but the expansion and growth of the nation beyond its minimum borders as well.
Peace and war are presented as opposites in the Bible in other places as well, most famously in Kohelet’s prescription of “a time for war, a time for peace.” Ecclesiastes 3:8. While modern-day peace activists have frequently and absurdly quoted the second half of the verse in their defense, one cannot escape the fact that the verse is granting equal legitimacy to war and peace in principle, and that in the context of the preceding text, Kohelet offers the idea that wisdom means knowing how to employ the proper means at the proper time.
24. Cf. Harold Louis Ginsberg, “Peace,” in Encyclopædia Judaica (Jerusalem, Encyclopædia Judaica), vol. 13, p. 196. This case cannot be argued away as an exception where the nation’s very existence is in question. The case in Deuteronomy is traditionally understood to refer not to the conquest of the Canaanite peoples—whom the Bible grants no peaceful option—but to Israelite expansion beyond its original territory once the nation has been established. Cf. the continuation, Deuteronomy 20:15-17.
25. I Kings 5:26-28.
26. I Kings 5:22-24. While it is true that Solomon provided in exchange some quantities of grain to Hiram, it is clear from the context that this is a minimal amount, meant only to put food on Hiram’s table (5:25) and possibly cover wages as well (5:20), but not to offer actual profit to Hiram’s kingdom.
27. I Kings 7:13.
28. I Kings 5:1-6. Again, the number of troops is twelve thousand, perhaps a reference to Pinhas. See note 21 above.
29. The most famous example of the homage paid Solomon by a foreign leader is the visit of the Queen of Sheba, I Kings 10:1-14. The queen’s gifts to Solomon included not only gold and precious stones, but a quantity of spices which, according to the Bible, was never afterwards equaled in any gift.
30. II Chronicles 1:15. Cf. II Chronicles 9:27.
31. I Kings 4:20.
32. This idea finds its parallel in the later idea of the Pax Romana. At the height of the Roman empire, peace reigned throughout the Western world precisely due to the unchallengeability of Rome’s legions.
33. I Chronicles 22:9.
34. I Kings 5:17-19.
35. Hagai 2:6-9, 21-23.
36. Shalom most exactly translates to “wholeness” or “completeness.” The etymological link between shalom (peace) and shalem (complete) finds at least one exact parallel in the Hebrew language, namely, the relation between kavod (honor) and kaved (weighty). The connection between completeness and well-being is apparent. The poverty of “peace” as an appropriate translation of shalom has been mentioned in a number of articles, including Ginsberg, p. 195, and Lionel Koppman, “Shalom,” in William H. Gentz, ed., The Dictionary of Bible and Religion (Nashville: Abingdon, 1986), pp. 789-790. What has scarcely been explored, however, is precisely what the Bible does mean, or put another way, what ideal is the Bible presenting in placing shalom among its most cherished values. See Aviezer Ravitzky, “Models of Peace in Jewish Thought” in Aviezer Ravitzky, In the Knowledge of God: Studies in Jewish Thought and History (Jerusalem: Keter, 1991), pp. 13-33. [Hebrew]
37. See note 48 below. Peace as the end to war resulting from mutual, voluntary disavowal of warring aspirations has become a given of western diplomacy. Early twentieth-century texts such as Thorstein Veblen’s The Nature of Peace and the Terms of Its Perpetuation (New York: Macmillan, 1917) and Benjamin Trueblood’s The Development of the Peace Idea and Other Essays (New York: Garland, 1972; the title essay was written around 1912) work entirely under this assumption, the latter being particularly interesting due to its invoking of Christian values such as the Golden Rule and Christian messianism. But even a hawk such as Richard Nixon was forced to accept the premise of the term when he distinguished between “perfect peace,” an end to animosity that is “the stuff of poetry and high-minded newspaper editorials, molded out of pretty thoughts and pretty words,” and “real peace,” a pragmatic path to global detente that will be “the down-to-earth product of the real world, manufactured by realistic, calculating leaders whose sense of their nations’ self-interest is diamond-hard and unflinching.” Richard Nixon, Real Peace (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1984), pp. 3-4.
38. Joel 4:9-17.
39. Obadiah 1:17-21.
40. Amos 9:12.
41. Micah 5:3-5.
42. Jeremiah 33:9.
43. Jeremiah 30:18-24.
44. Ezekiel 38:1-39:16. In popular Jewish reference, this vision has for some reason come to be misunderstood as a battle between two superpowers, Gog and Magog, the result of which will somehow be the redemption of Israel. But in the account itself, it is Israel who fights against the superpower Gog, who dwells in the land of Magog. Cf. Ezekiel 38:2. The war takes place on Israelite territory, and ends in Israelite victory. In particular, cf. Ezekiel 38:14-20.
45. Ezekiel 34:24-28.
46. Isaiah 65:17, 66:22.
47. Ezekiel 36:26.
48. In addition to the passages from Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Joel, Obadiah, Amos, Micah and Hagai which are presented in this discussion, examples of the vision of the Jewish-national redemption can be found in Hosea 11:2-11, Nahum 1:1-2:14, Habakuk 2:13-14, Zephania 2:7-9 and 3:12-20, Zecharia 8:11-9:16 and Malachi 3:1-12. The Habakuk reference is less obvious, for that entire book employs a metaphoric style that refrains from explicit reference to people and nations, and contains little eschatological reference. The only prophetic book remaining is Jonah, a story whose only prediction of any kind is the imminent destruction of Nineveh.
The sole apparent exception to the prophetic intent of “peace” is Zecharia 9:10, in which the new Israelite king will “speak peace unto the nations,” in an immediate context of universal disarmament. Again, however, a look at the full passage removes any doubt that what is being described is the Israelite military domination of the entire world, which in turn will obviate the need or capacity for independent military aspiration, and therefore bring an end to war. Indeed, even in that very verse, the words that immediately follow are “and his reign shall extend from sea to sea, from the river until the ends of the earth.”
I have deliberately excluded from this list the historical books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings, despite their traditional inclusion in the “prophetic” texts. This is not because of any lack of Jewish-national sentiment in those books, nor because I wish to make any statement regarding their prophetic origin. Rather, these texts are in principle historical, depicting the rise and fall of the First Commonwealth, and while in that context they do contain a healthy sampling of the words of various prophets, they contain little eschatological vision.
49. Isaiah 2:4.
50. Isaiah 1:24-2:4. The “spears into pruninghooks” image is also employed in Micah 3:3, immediately followed by his use of the “vine and fig tree” image. In Micah, the passage is a combination of the various prophecies discussed here, the sum total of which supports the suggested thesis even more than the Isaiah vision.
51. In this article, I deliberately ignore the scholarly debates over authorship of the various books, or parts of books, in the Bible. The biblical peace idea is universal throughout the prophetic texts, and for our purposes it therefore matters little whether a given vision was actually written by Isaiah or his deutero-namesake. Note, for instance, the similarity of the visions described in the first and last chapters of Isaiah, despite their having been authored, according to some scholars, by different people.
52. Isaiah 66:12-20.
53. The term “my servants” refers throughout Isaiah to the people Israel. For example: “Now hear, Jacob my servant, and Israel whom I have chosen: Thus says the Eternal, your Maker and Creator from the womb, who will help you—fear not, my servant Jacob, my chosen Jeshurun.... I will pour my spirit upon your seed, and my blessing upon your offspring.” Isaiah 44:1-3.
54. Isaiah 65:13-18.
55. Micah 4:4.
56. Isaiah 11:1-15.
57. Another interpretation of the passage presents itself: Namely, that the wolf, lamb and other antagonistic animals—whose meaning is far from obvious—are not the nations of the world at all, but really the tribes of Israel, whose unification and cooperation grants them the military power to defeat the offending nations. True, this latter reading is at great variance with the traditional interpretation. Yet the classical reading enjoys virtually no support from context, while the revised reading offers the distinct advantages of (i) consistency with the bulk of Isaiah’s visions, (ii) consistency with the immediate passage that anyway has the tribes unifying in war against the evil nations, and (iii) an explanation of the reference to King David—whose crowning achievement was the unification of the Jewish kingdoms of Israel and Judah.
Since the passage is both preceded and followed by the physical defeat of the various evil nations, the only support for the pacifist-utopian reading is the idea that the messianic king “will smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked” (Isaiah 11:4). This verse, while assumed to be depicting a nonviolent ruler (leaving the reader to wonder precisely how the wicked are slain), can just as easily be referring to the power and righteousness of the king’s judgment—both the “rod of his mouth” and the “breath of his lips” refer to the justice and power of his verdicts, independent of (but not denying) his military greatness. For another Israel-centered reading of the text, see the Radak’s commentary on Isaiah 11:6.
58. The account of Solomon’s kingdom is quoted earlier; I Kings 5:1-6. Micah, as mentioned earlier, also quotes this account (Micah 4:4), and it is also referenced in Zecharia 3:10.
59. Isaiah 9:1-6.
60. This last citation is an almost verbatim quotation from Solomon’s order that David’s enemy Yoav be killed. I Kings 2:33.
61. Aside from the Pinhas story in Numbers, the term only appears in one other place in the Bible, in the book of Isaiah. The Isaiah reference is a beautiful description of God’s everlasting commitment to Israel: “For this is to me as the waters of Noah: Just as I swore never again to bring the waters of Noah upon the earth, so too have I sworn never again to be furious with you and rebuke you. For the mountains may crumble, and the hills collapse, but my compassion for you shall not wane, and my covenant of peace will not collapse—says the Eternal your comforter.” Isaiah 54:9-10. Cf. Malachi 2:5.
62. Letters to Atticum, book VII, epistle 14.
63. Martin Luther, On Marriage Matters (1530) in Robert C. Schultz, ed., Luther’s Works (American Edition; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967), pp. 265-320.
64. This view finds ample expression in the rabbinic literature as well. The Jerusalem Talmud provides one of the finest formulations of it: “The world stands upon three things: Justice, truth and peace; and all three are really one: If justice is done, truth is done, and peace is done.” In other words, only by doing justice can peace be achieved. Jerusalem Ta’anit 4:2.
65. Genesis 34:25-31.
66. Genesis 35:5. It is unlikely that Jacob ever fully appreciated the merit of his sons’ position, for Levi’s tribal elevation later on comes in direct contradiction to the curse they receive from Jacob on his deathbed. Cf. Genesis 49:5-7.
67. Exodus 32:26-28.
68. Exodus 32:29. Moses informs the Levites that they will receive a “blessing” from God as a reward, and this is traditionally understood to refer to the special status the Levites later receive: They are given the duties of maintaining the Tabernacle instead of military service, encamp in a close ring around the Tabernacle, and have their physical needs provided for by the other tribes rather than having to farm for themselves. From this, it is clear that their unusual position in the history of Israel is understood as stemming from their righteous fortitude, and in particular from their reaction to the Golden Calf. Cf. Numbers 8:5-26.
69. Malachi 2:4-6.
70. The connection between peace and moral improvement was not lost upon the talmudic rabbis, who said that “Any peace that does not contain reproval is not peace.” Genesis Raba 54:3. Note the talmudic idea that Elijah, the prophet notorious for his chastisement of the Jewish people, comes only to “bring peace.” Mishna Eduyot 8:7.
Many will contend that the entire book of Job is intended to address the very unreliability of the link between righteousness and well-being. Yet that book is in many ways an exception that proves the rule—that is, were it not for the Bible’s assumption of worldly rewards for righteousness, Job’s question would make no sense.
71. The symbolism of Levi representing heroism is underscored by a comparison to the forefather Levi’s partner-in-violence, Simeon. For whereas the descendants of Levi prove themselves in the test of the Golden Calf, sealing their eternal elevation in Israel, the descendants of his brother Simeon suffer a different fate. In the Golden Calf episode, the Simeonites fail to grasp the evil taking place, and take no action of the sort that earns Levi the priesthood. Later on, as if to emphasize the difference between the brothers, the tribe of Simeon fails to inherit a contiguous piece of territory in the Promised Land (Joshua 19:1-9), and is thus doomed to tribal sickliness and historical triviality. And it is their tribal leader who finds himself at the wrong end of Pinhas’ spear. Cf. Genesis 49:7. See also note 1, above.
