Human Education

And He will judge between the nations, and will mediate for many peoples; And they will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning knives.  Nation will not lift up a sword against nation, and never again will they learn war.  Isaiah 2:4  NASB

Learn war – “Giving birth to one child is a mystery; bringing death to millions is but a skill.”[1]

What a sad comment on humanity!  Robert Alter notes, “Fighting was a skill that required training, . . .”[2]  Violence against members of our own kind must be taught, but once learned we find it nearly impossible to un-teach.  As every parent knows, it doesn’t take any training at all for a two-year old to start expressing anger or to claim possession over a favorite toy at the expense of another.  Is that just the result of the Fall, an inherited “sinful nature” intent on making the world fit my desires? Or is there something else in the mix, some combination of culture and nurture that seems to inevitably lead to aggressive behavior?  One thing is certain.  In order for humanity to kill its own, that primal aggression must be cultivated and enhanced.  The Genesis account is aware of this deterioration in sacredness of life as early as Lamech, who prided himself on his intense aggression.  “Adah and Zilla h, listen to me; wives of Lamech, hear my words.  I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me.  If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times” (Genesis 4:23-24 NIV).  Not a particularly glorifying self-description—unless, of course, your point is to magnify your ruthlessness.

And that’s the real issue, isn’t it?  Ruthlessness.  If you want an empire, you must be ruthless.  The Egyptians knew this.  So did the Babylonians, Assyrians, and the Romans.  Perhaps especially the Romans.  If you want to control the world, you must subdue or slaughter all your enemies.  Steve Lilly offers as rather self-serving excuse for Rome’s slaughter of millions: “The Roman Empire was violent because the period that it operated in was extremely violent. If anything, Rome offered humanity a version of controlled, state-sanctioned violence that was more predictable than Hollywood and others would have you believe.”[3]  In other words, everyone else was just as bad so why not “do as the Romans did?”  Estimates are only estimates, but Rome managed to kill between 18 and 50 million people in the 1000 year reign.  Genghis Kahn achieved that number in just 5 years (250,000 a month).  The past is sometimes a portent of the future.  We’ve had more wars and more deaths in the last 100 years than all human history combined.  And it doesn’t appear we’re willing to stop.

Isaiah’s prophecy came at a time when all the world around him was at war or near war.  Death was a daily experience.  And, of course, things would get much worse when the Babylonians arrived.  For Isaiah to even suggest an era of universal peace was tantamount to a drug-induced dream.  But not only does he suggest it, he guarantees it.  God is not Mars, the Roman god of war.  God is first and foremost יְהֹוָ֣ה יְהֹוָ֔ה אֵ֥ל רַח֖וּם (Exodus 34:6 – The LORD, the LORD, compassionate).  Absolutely first in God’s self-description is רַח֖וּם (raḥûm – compassionate).  Isaiah knows this.  God is not a God of vengeance, wrath, or revenge.  Maybe it might seem so when He is pushed to the utter limit, but His modus operandi is anything but violence.  Swords into plowshares is the divine plan.  Unfortunately, it will take divine intervention for this to happen.

Hebrew shows us that milḥāmâ (war) is not just cognitive education.  It takes training (lāmad).  To not “learn war” is much more than closing the war colleges of the world.  It is to re-train human invention, human creativity, from the art of war to the proactive practice of peace.  This requires more than a few re-education camps and much more than dozens of “peace” treaties.  What Isaiah is interested in, and what God promises, is an entire change in paradigm.  The yetzer ha’ra, unleased from Torah, is intent on only one thing: the world according to me!  Whatever it takes.  The opposite of compassion is indifference—indifference to others, to their circumstances, to their suffering, to even their existence.  It’s not an evil nature that makes us into tyrants.  It’s an accumulation of choices, unchecked by His spirit.  It’s the “spin factor.”  Each time the yetzer ha’ra supplants the yetzer ha’tov, its power grows.  That power leads to the serpent’s promise, “You will be like gods,” and men who think they are are the most terrifying creatures on the planet.  Only God can fix a system that trains men to think so.

Topical Index: learn war, milḥāmâ, war, lāmad, educate, train, raḥûm, compassion, Isaiah 2:4

[1] Abraham Heschel  Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism (Free Press Paperbacks, 1959), p. 83.

[2] Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible  Volume 3: Writings, p. 627, fn. 4.

[3] https://www.quora.com/How-was-the-Roman-Empire-so-ruthless