So I wrote a few days ago about watching Sennacherib’s Prism — a 2,700-year-old record of the siege of Jerusalem — get carried into a bomb shelter during a missile alert. It was a pretty surreal thing…but it gets even better.

A few weeks ago we opened an exhibition at the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem called “As Soon as the War Is Over,” tracing ancient warfare from the Battle of Kadesh to the Pax Romana. The exhibition ends with peace. Specifically, it ends with a bent sickle sword.

In the ancient Near East, weapons were sometimes deliberately bent before burial — retired from violence, permanently. The metal itself says: this is over. The prophets took the image further.........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)