NOTES for Num 6:24-26
Among the blessings with which God commanded His priests to bless His people, the blessing of peace holds a special place. Of course, peaceful life is a good; only a very bloodthirsty or very frivolous person can doubt this. But is peaceful life alone what is being spoken of here? It is not by chance that this blessing is connected with another, the one that mentions God's mercy, verse 25, and that the two together constitute blessing as such, which will help preserve the people, verse 24. Of course, peaceful life in itself is necessary for the preservation of the people: the Jews were never so numerous that they could afford a major war. But for it to become possible, God's direct intervention in the fate of His people is needed; otherwise, survival in the political situation that took shape in the Near East, and it was never calm there, was completely unrealistic.
And such intervention, as is evident, is never limited to solving one concrete task. Perhaps this is exactly why we are sometimes so indecisive in our prayers: consciously or subconsciously we understand that God will of course solve our problems, but after that He will no longer leave us or leave us in peace. He will try to make us His to the end. So too for the people of God, the blessing of peace was of course directly connected with peaceful life, with life without war, which undoubtedly gladdened everyone. But God always went further, desiring to turn His people into a community of the faithful, for whom peace would be inseparable from His presence and from communion with Him.