How to Make War

 

This week’s reading, Shofetim, mentions a number of issues having to do with warfare. The first of these concerns the institution of kingship. Elsewhere in the ancient Near East, kings were virtually all-powerful: in Mesopotamia, the monarchy was held to be a divinely created and divinely supported institution; in Egypt, the kings themselves were held to be divine. In either case, war or peace was very much in the hands of the monarch.

 

Against this background, the law of the Israelite king (Deut 17:14-20) must seem quite extraordinary: the king’s powers are subject to divine restriction—including, significantly, his power to initiate wars. Verse 17:14 asserts that the king “shall not have a large cavalry”; presumably, maintaining stables full of horses (along with a corresponding number of chariots and charioteers) might provide a tempting opportunity to go to war needlessly, a danger that, mutatis mutandis, still exists today.

 

Along with this are a set of restrictions on who may be drafted into the army. Someone who has built a new house but has not yet dedicated it (prior to inhabiting it)—such a person is to return home, “lest he die in battle and someone else dedicate it in his stead.” Similarly, someone who planted a vineyard but had not yet had the chance to harvest its fruits—he too was sent back home. The same was true of a man who had betrothed a wife but not yet married her. All these suggest that, under normal circumstances, the call to arms was not an absolute; there were circumstances in which it was outweighed by other considerations.

 

Then comes one final, rather striking, exemption. “Is there anyone here who is fearful and afraid?” the army officials were instructed to ask. “If so, let him go back home, lest his comrades’ hearts melt like his.” Our rabbis were curious to define the difference between being “fearful” and being “afraid” (literally, “soft hearted”). The person who is fearful, they said, is fearful of being killed; but the person who is afraid (soft-hearted) is afraid of killing someone else.

 

Toward the end of this week’s reading comes a restriction on the conduct of siege warfare. While it was permitted for the besieging army to eat the fruit of the fields surrounding the city, they could not chop the trees down. “For are the trees of the field [like] a man, to retreat from before you in the siege?” (Deut 20:19).

 

Of course, it would be wrong to claim that all this adds up to an endorsement of global pacifism. The Torah never supposes that warfare will come to an end (though, at least in local terms, such was certainly part of the vision of the prophet Isaiah). But neither does it contain the sort of bloodthirsty glorification of battle still familiar in our own day.

 

By coincidence, this Shabbat marks the anniversary of the first of four international treaties designed in modern times to limit the way in which wars are conducted. The first Geneva Convention included ten articles governing (among other things) the treatment of sick and wounded soldiers; they were ratified on August 22, 1864. Subsequently, three other such treaties have been concluded, the last and best known of which is the Geneva Convention of 1949, which has been ratified by some 196 countries.

 

Shabbat shalom!