The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves one of the strangest laws in the Torah. "If thou wilt make an altar of stones unto My Name, thou shalt not build them sculptured; for if thou lift up iron, from which the sword is made, upon the stone, thou wilt profane it" (Exodus 20:22).
The Targum glosses the Hebrew with an astonishing explanation. Why is iron forbidden on altar-stones? Because from iron the sword is made. The Targumist refuses to let the law stay mysterious. He names the metaphysics: iron is the metal of violence. The altar is the place where violence is ended — where animals are offered in place of human life, where human life is reconsecrated, where the long history of bloodshed is reversed by the shedding of a single careful sacrifice. To bring the tool of murder into the construction of the peace-place is to contaminate the whole endeavor.
This is why Jewish tradition records that when Solomon built the Temple (1 Kings 6:7), no iron tool was heard on the site. The stones were cut elsewhere, far from the sanctuary, and assembled in silence. The rabbis even imagine a worm — the shamir — that could split stone without metal, used so that iron would never touch the holy structure.
The prohibition against sculpting is a related move. Sculpture shapes the stone to the mason's will. The altar refuses to be the project of any human artistry. Its stones must come from the earth as the earth offers them — whole, natural, unimproved.
The takeaway: the instruments of war cannot build the instruments of peace. If you want a different outcome, you must change the tools, not just the intention.