By What Merit Do We Succeed in Battle?

Lessons from David and Shlomo

Solomon reading from the Torah of Moses , “North French Hebrew Miscellany,” illuminated manuscript, late 13th C., The British Library.

Kings David and Shlomo are doubtless the most well-known Jewish kings, and for good reason. David, for his being the first “proper” Jewish king who began the Davidic dynasty, as well as for his life of adventure and danger, which the Torah devotes the length of a book to. And his son Shlomo for his legendary wisdom, affluence, fame throughout the world, and construction of the Temple.

But at the heart of it, the primary purpose of a king is a military leader, as the Ran explains, and as we know from the history of all nations. Therefore, we would expect Kings David and Shlomo to glorify military might and conquest in their thoughts and writings.

But from David we find precisely the opposite:

David replied to the Philistine, “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin; but I come against you in the name of the LORD of Hosts, the God of the ranks of Israel, whom you have defied.

(I Samuel 8:11)

…….

Now I know that the LORD will give victory to His anointed, will answer him from His heavenly sanctuary with the mighty victories of His right arm. They [call] on chariots, they [call] on horses, but we call on the name of the LORD our God.

(Tehillim 20)

….

Kings are not delivered by a large force; warriors are not saved by great strength; horses are a false hope for deliverance; for all their great power they provide no escape. Truly the eye of the LORD is on those who fear Him, who wait for His faithful care to save them from death, to sustain them in famine.

(Tehillim 33)

……

He does not prize the strength of horses, nor value the fleetness of men; but the LORD values those who fear Him, those who depend on His faithful care.

(Tehilim 147)

…………….

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi says: What is the meaning of that which is written: “Our feet were standing in your gates, Jerusalem” (Psalms 122:2)? What caused our feet to withstand the enemies in war? It is the gates of Jerusalem, where they were engaged in Torah study.

(Makkos 10a)

Shlomo followed the same ideology of his father, and wrote:

I have further observed under the sun that the race is not won by the swift, nor the battle by the mighty…

Ibn Ezra: Nor the battle by the mighty- as it states (Tehillim 33) “warriors are not saved by great strength”

(Koheles 9:11)

These celebrated military leaders were certainly no “New Jews”, no advocates of Muscular Judaism. To the contrary, they were proponents of faith in God through and through, and viewed the army and weaponry as merely a means to fulfill His Divine deliverance.

Moreover, it is clear from the Torah that a powerful, well-trained military is not ideal, but the primary reliance should be on the salvation of God Himself. The Torah states that a nation who cleaves to God will achieve victory with minimal military power:

Five of you shall give chase to a hundred, and a hundred of you shall give chase to ten thousand; your enemies shall fall before you by the sword.

(Vayikra 26:8)

And as the Navi laments:

These are the nations that GOD left in order to test the Israelites who had not known any of the wars of Canaan, so that succeeding generations of Israelites might be made to experience war—but only those who had not known the former wars:

Radak: He only left them so that the generations of the Israelites who come after the first generation would know what war is if they do not keep the way of God and they need to be taught the ways of war, because God did not fight for them. Only the generation before them did not know the ways of war, because they did not need it, because God fought for them, and “one man of them will chase a thousand.”

(Shoftim 3:2)

And as Devorah sang:

When they chose new gods, Was there a fighter then in the gates? No shield or spear was seen Among forty thousand in Israel!

Radak: …some explain, "no shield was seen," as positive. Meaning, when Israel would do the will of the Creator, may He be exalted, and did not follow other gods - and that was in the days of Yehoshua - they did not need a shield nor a spear for the forty thousand Children of Gad and Children of Reuven. And even though they were the army's vanguard, they did not need to show a shield nor a spear, since the Lord fought for them. So they went [to war] with their brothers, and returned in peace. There was no adversary and no bad incident, since they were doing the will of the Creator.

(Shoftim 5:8)

Even the institution of a king as military leader is considered inherently unnecessary by the Torah. When the Jewish nation demanded from a Samuel a king to fight their battles, it was considered a lack of faith in God:

But when they said, "Appoint for us a king”, this was bad and a lack of trust in God, and they said “like all the nations”, but they did not need (a king like) all the nations if they followed God, because He fights their wars, yet they said, “And he will go before us and fight our wars.” Therefore, the Almighty said to Samuel, “They are not disgusted by your rule, but by mine”.

(Radak, I Samuel 8:5)

And when the Jewish nation was on a high enough level, such as Jerusalem in the times of Chizkiyah, they merited salvation without picking up any weapons, but by an angel of God incinerating the entire Assyrian army (II Kings 19:35).

Is the merit of the soldiers enough?

After clarifying this fundamental of the Torah, that victory is only achieved through Divine assistance and not physical strength, it remains to be seen by what merit this Divine assistance can be won.

Is the merit of the soldiers themselves, putting their lives on the line by going out to battle, itself enough to curry Divine favor? Clearly not. If we are focusing on the mesiras nefesh on its own, all armies put their lives on the line. Why would God choose the mesiras nefesh of the Israelites over the mesiras nefesh of the Philistines, the Arameans, or the Babylonians? Why would God choose the mesiras nefesh of the IDF over the mesiras nefesh of Hamas? And as we observe from the sad history of the First Temple period, the states of Israel and Judah were destroyed, despite both possessing armies that were certainly moser nefesh for the Jewish nation. Jeremiah tells us:

Thus said GOD: Do not delude yourselves into thinking, “The Chaldeans will go away from us.” They will not. Even if you defeated the whole army of the Chaldeans that are fighting against you, and only wounded men were left lying in their tents, they would get up and burn this city down!

(Jeremiah 37:10)

The Torah states:

God will put you to rout before your enemies; you shall march out against them by a single road, but flee from them by many roads; and you shall become a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth.

Devarim (28:25)

The merit of going to battle is obviously not in itself enough to achieve victory on the battlefield.

Rather, as the Torah makes clear in so many places, it is in the merit of the nation dedicating itself to the service of God.

Now, if you obey your God, to observe faithfully all the divine commandments which I enjoin upon you this day, your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth….God will put to rout before [your army] the enemies who attack you; they will march out against you by a single road, but flee from you by many roads.

Devarim (28:7)

But be most resolute to observe faithfully all that is written in the Book of the Teaching of Moses, without ever deviating from it to the right or to the left…But hold fast to the ETERNAL your God as you have done to this day. GOD has driven out great, powerful nations on your account, and no one has withstood you to this day. A single one of you would put a thousand to flight, for the ETERNAL your God has been fighting for you, just as you were promised.

(Joshua 23)

In the times of the Temple, the greatest manifestation of service of God was in the Temple, and this was the merit by which the Jewish army would succeed. As Shlomo said:

When Your people take the field against their enemy by whatever way You send them, and they pray to GOD in the direction of the city that You have chosen, and of the House that I have built to Your name, oh, hear in heaven their prayer and supplication and uphold their cause.

(I Kings 8:45)

And this is exactly what what King Abijah warned King Jeroboam, and what actually happened:

As for us, the LORD is our God, and we have not forsaken Him. The priests who minister to the LORD are the sons of Aaron, and the Levites are at their tasks. They offer burnt offerings in smoke each morning and each evening, and the aromatic incense, the rows of bread on the pure table; they kindle the golden lampstand with its lamps burning each evening, for we keep the charge of the LORD our God, while you have forsaken it. See, God is with us as our chief, and His priests have the trumpets for sounding blasts against you. O children of Israel, do not fight the LORD God of your fathers, because you will not succeed.”

……

When Judah turned around and saw that the fighting was before and behind them, they cried out to the LORD, and the priests blew the trumpets. The men of Judah raised a shout; and when the men of Judah raised a shout, God routed Jeroboam and all Israel before Abijah and Judah. The Israelites fled before Judah, and God delivered them into their hands. Abijah and his army inflicted a severe defeat on them; 500,000 picked men of Israel fell slain. The Israelites were crushed at that time, while the people of Judah triumphed because they relied on the LORD God of their fathers.

(II Chronicles 13)

In our times, when there is no Temple, the greatest manifestation of Divine service is those who devote their lives to Torah (Menachos 110a). And not only that, but even in the times of the Temple, it was Torah study that was the primary merit that led to the salvation of the Jewish people:

Rabbi Yitzḥak Nappaḥa says: The yoke of Sennacherib was destroyed due to the oil [shemen] of Hezekiah that would burn in the synagogues and study halls when the Jewish people were engaged in Torah study at night. What did Hezekiah do to ensure Torah study? He inserted a sword at the entrance of the study hall and said: Anyone who does not engage in Torah study shall be stabbed with this sword. As a result, they searched from Dan in the north to Beersheba in the south, and did not find an ignoramus. They searched from Gevat to Antipatris and did not find a male child, or a female child, or a man, or a woman who was not expert even in the complex halakhot of ritual purity and impurity. And it is about that generation that the prophet says: “And it shall come to pass in that day, that a man shall nourish a young calf and two sheep. And it shall come to pass, from the abundance of milk that they produce, he shall eat butter, for butter and honey shall everyone eat, everyone who remains in the midst of the land” (Isaiah 7:21–22). And the prophet continues and says: “And it shall come to pass in that day that every place where there were one thousand vines for one thousand silver coins, it shall be for briars and thorns” (Isaiah 7:23). Although one thousand vines are worth one thousand silver coins and one could earn substantial profits through agricultural labor, the fields will grow briars and thorns due to neglect. The people of that generation were devoted to the study of Torah and engaged in labor only minimally to sustain themselves. It is written: “And your spoils shall be gathered like the gathering of the locusts; as the advance of the locusts shall he advance” (Isaiah 33:4).

(Sanhedrin 94b)

This is why Chazal emphasized so many times that Torah study is that which protects the Jewish nation.

This is not to say that the soldiers are not contributing to the merit of delivering the Jewish nation. If they have faith in God, and are fighting with the proper intentions, their merit is extremely great:

Once a soldier enters the throes of battle, he should rely on the Hope of Israel and their Savior in times of need. He should realize that he is fighting for the sake of the oneness of God's Name. Therefore, he should place his soul in his hand and not show fright or fear. He should not worry about his wife or children. On the contrary, he should wipe their memory from his heart, removing all thoughts from his mind except the war….In contrast, anyone who fights with his entire heart, without fear, with the intention of sanctifying God's name alone, can be assured that he will find no harm, nor will bad overtake him. He will be granted a proper family in Israel and gather merit for himself and his children forever. He will also merit eternal life in the world to come as I Samuel 25:28-29 states: 'God will certainly make my lord a faithful house, for my lord fights the wars of God and evil will not be found with you... and my lord's soul will be bound in a bond of life with God.

(Rambam Kings and Wars 7:15)

On the other hand, it is those who denigrate and undermine Torah study who are the greatest allies of our enemies. It is these friends of Hamas who put the Jewish nation in danger, weaken it, and bring tragedy and destruction.

It is a great sin to disgrace Torah sages or to hate them. Jerusalem was not destroyed until [its inhabitants] disgraced its sages, as implied by [II Chronicles 36:16]: "And they would mock the messengers of God, despise His words, and scoff at His prophets" - i.e., they would scorn those who taught His words. Similarly, the Torah's prophecy [Leviticus 26:16]: "If you despise My statutes" [should be interpreted]: "If you despise the teachers of My statutes." Whoever disgraces the sages has no portion in the world to come and is included in the category: "Those who scorn the word of God" [Numbers 15:31].

(Rambam Talmud Torah 6:11)

And although we cannot claim to know exact Divine calculations, it is fortunate that in this generation, He gave us the means to increase Torah study so prodigiously, precisely to counteract the effect of those enemies of the Torah.

_______

Finally, a trivia question. Who was the very first Jewish king, as described by explicit pesukim?