Where DOES Peace Begin?

Job 25:2

These tense days, as on so many other days, many of us yearn and pray for peace—sung in vigils, chanted in the Mourners’ Kaddish Prayer, whispered at home, or heard in public cries for justice in our broken world. Praying for peace can be cliche and yet always matters - but how often do we pause to consider where some of these famous and familiar words come from? And where does peace itself come from?

Chapter 25 of Job is the shortest of the book and one of the shorter ones in the Hebrew Bible. It contains the short speech of Bildad, one of Job’s three friends, who offers what is perhaps the briefest and most resigned responses in the entire book. By this point, so many winded words later, Job’s friends have exhausted their arguments, and Bildad’s final contribution is little more than a reflection on divine majesty.

His words also include the poetic origin for one of the most known and memorized sentence in Jewish liturgy, appealing to “The One who makes peace in the high heavens.”

What is the prayer actually about - and how does its origin reflect on its meaning and utility for us at tender times such as right now?

Bildad responds to Job’s pained rage against a deity who doesn’t seem to care about cruelty and suffering, by pointing out that there is nothing but God and that Job’s frustrated words are futile. To illustrate his point he points above and says the following:

הַמְשֵׁל וָפַחַד עִמּוֹ עֹשֶׂה שָׁלוֹם בִּמְרוֹמָיו׃

“Dominion and dread are God’s domain, God imposes peace on high.”

Job 25:2

This brief declaration, descriptive and/or aspirational, points to a God whose power encompasses both the chaos of human suffering and the harmony of the cosmos. It brings to mind Albert Einstein’s reference to the Creator as the Clockmaker - it all runs like clockwork, at least up above.

The rabbis of the Talmud found deep meaning in the idea of peace in the heavens.

In the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Rosh HaShanah 23b, Rabbi Yoḥanan explains how God arranges the celestial bodies to maintain harmony. The sun never sees the concave side of the crescent moon or the rainbow, lest the moon feel diminished or the rainbow be misinterpreted as a weapon of war. This delicate choreography reflects a deity who prioritizes peace and order, even in the heavens where conflict is rare.

It’s a poetic way to imagine the symmetry and astounding clockwork of the celestial realities that most of us only get a glimpse of. Even with a telescope.

The rabbinic Midrash expands on this theme. In Deuteronomy Rabbah Rabbi Levi likens the constellations to travelers on a spiral staircase, each seeing only what follows behind them. This arrangement prevents rivalry, allowing each celestial body to exclaim, “I am the first!” The heavens, then, are not merely ordered but imbued with a divine wisdom that fosters peace through mutual respect.

Perhaps the most evocative commentary comes from an obscure work, Derekh Eretz Zuta, which describes the angels Michael and Gabriel. Michael, the angel of fire, and Gabriel, the angel of water, represent opposing forces of nature. Yet in God’s realm, they coexist without harm. As Bar Kappara, the famed Galilean sage and trickster who lived in the 3rd Century CE teaches that if God makes peace among the angels—who have no rivalry or dissent—how much more do we, living in a world rife with division, need divine intervention to make peace among us?

These teachings are all in tune with the concept of ‘as above, so below’ - we look up to imagine the perfect world beyond us that we hope we can co-create down here. It’s always a two way movement.

It’s not clear how these words first made their way into our prayers and prayer book, but The Kaddish as a prayer took shape during the Talmudic period (approximately 3rd-6th centuries CE). Initially, it was a brief statement of faith recited by scholars after studying Torah, later evolving into a prayer of sanctification and communal hope for peace. By the geonic period (7th-11th centuries CE), the Mourners’ Kaddish emerged as a stand-alone public prayer. The phrase Oseh Shalom Bimromav appears to have been added to the Kaddish around this time, reflecting its growing association with themes of peace, consolation, and the hope for redemption.

Bildad’s words, while brief, remind us that the ideal of harmony and peace, within and beyond us, is both a divine ideal and a human responsibility.

The Jewish liturgy keeps evolving. And just as some ancient sage took the words from Job and inserted them into the prayer book - contemporary sages are doing the same and keep updating the sacred poetry to expand the peace-making in teh world.

In 2006, Rabbi Arthur Waskow composed the“Mourners Kaddish In Times of War and Violence” which concludes with these words:

עוֹשֶׂה שָׁלוֹם בִּמְרוֹמָיו
הוּא יַעֲשֶׂה שָׁלוֹם עָלֵינוּ
וְעַל כָּל יִשְׂרָאֵל
וְעַל כָּל יִשְׁמָאֵל
וְעַל כָּל יוֺשְׁבֵי תֵבֶל
וְאִמְרוּ אָמֵן.

You who make harmony

in the ultimate reaches of the universe,

teach us to make harmony

within ourselves, among ourselves —

and peace for all the children of Abraham,

through Hagar and through Sarah —

the children of Israel;

the children of Ishmael;

and for all who dwell upon this planet.

Amen.

When we say, Oseh shalom bimromav today - let it be more than a rote recitation. Let it be a call to action, a reminder that the spacious symmetry above—can and must—inspire the work of peace in our reality here below. Let Peace Prevail. It begins with our words, intentions and every small step. As below so above.

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