Justice and War in Parshat Shoftim - 8/28/25

This week’s Torah portion, Shoftim, takes us deep into questions of justice, governance, and even warfare. Some of the passages feel surprisingly humane for the ancient world: before waging battle, the Israelites must offer terms of peace (Deuteronomy 20:10), and they are forbidden from cutting down fruit-bearing trees, preserving the land even in times of war (20:19). At the same time, other verses trouble us: the command to wipe out entire nations or to take women as spoils raises questions about morality and violence.

One of the most challenging teachings in Shoftim is the phrase “life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth” (19:21). The rabbis long ago interpreted this not as literal retaliation but as a call for equitable compensation—an attempt to restrain vengeance and channel it into measured justice. Yet the juxtaposition is stark: in a section about limiting revenge among individuals, we are also given rules for wars that sound anything but restrained. Does “life for life” apply only to civil law, or should it shape the way we think about war?

Jewish Voices on Moral Warfare

Jewish tradition has wrestled with these tensions for centuries. The Talmud (Sotah 44a) already limited who could be drafted into battle, exempting the newly married, those who had just built a home, or those afraid. War was not to be waged lightly. Later commentators like Maimonides distinguished between milchemet mitzvah (obligatory wars, such as defending Israel from attack) and milchemet reshut (optional wars, waged only with the consent of the Sanhedrin). These distinctions suggest that war is never an ordinary option—it must be carefully constrained and morally justified.

The medieval philosopher Nachmanides noted the Torah’s insistence on offering peace before war, reading it as a sign that—even when violence seems sanctioned—human life remains sacred. And the modern scholar Rabbi Jonathan Sacks taught that while the Torah reflects the realities of an ancient, violent world, it also plants seeds of restraint and ethical awareness that point toward a higher ideal of peace.

Wrestling, Not Resolving

Shoftim does not give us easy answers. It shows us that even in sacred text, warfare is messy, morally compromised, and bound up in human frailty. But it also insists that justice, restraint, and compassion must not be forgotten, even on the battlefield. We might say that the Torah holds before us an unresolved tension: the world as it was, and the world as it ought to be.

In our own time, when images of war and violence reach us daily, perhaps our task is not to claim certainty about “just wars” but to keep asking the questions, to resist growing numb, and to hold fast to the Torah’s small but vital reminders: offer peace before fighting, preserve the fruit trees, honor life even when it is threatened.

-Rabbi Hannah Wallick