Numbers 31

Updated
2001-05-26; 14:32:32utc

III. The Conquest and Division of Israel 31:1-36:13 A. Victory over Midian 31:1-54

This chapter represents a sorrowful page in the history of the conquest of Canaan. The order to take vengeance on the Midianites came from God. The verses 1-12 detail the instructions and the execution. The verses 13-18 tell the gruesome story of the slaughter of prisoners. In the verses 19-24 the soldiers and their spoil are purified before they are allowed back into the camp. The verses 25-47 give us an inventory of the spoil, and in the verses 48-54 we read that the commanding officers decided to bring a memorial offering to the tabernacle as an expression of gratitude that no one in the Israelite army was killed in the raid.

The Pulpit Commentary has a lengthy section in which the moral questions that arise from this chapter are probed. We copy some of the remarks: "The grave moral difficulty presented by the treatment of their enemies by the Israelites, under the sanction or even direct command of God, is here presented in its gravest form. It will be best first to state the proceedings in all their ugliness; then to reject the false excuses made for them; and lastly, to justify (if possible) the Divine sanction accorded to them.

I. That the Midianites had injured Israel is clear; as also that they had done so deliberately, craftily, and successfully, under the advice of Balaam. They had so acted as if e.g. a modern nation were to pour its opium into the ports of a dreaded neighbor in time of peace, not simply for the sake of gain (which is base enough), but with deliberate intent to ruin the morals and destroy the manhood of the nation. … Midian, therefore, was attacked by a detachment of the Israelites…. So far the Israelites had but followed the ordinary customs of war, with this great exception in their favor, that they offered (as is evident from the narrative) no violence to the women. Upon their return to the camp Moses was greatly displeased at the fact of the Midianitish women having been brought in, and gave orders that all the male children and all the women who were no virgins were to be slain. The inspection necessary to determine the latter point was left presumably to the soldiers. … To put the matter boldly, we have to face the fact that, under Moses' directions, 12,000 soldiers had to deal with perhaps 50,000 women, first by ascertaining that they were not virgins, and then by killing them in cold blood. It is small additional horror that a multitude of infants must have perished directly or indirectly with their mothers.

II. It is commonly urged in vindication of this massacre that the war was God's war, and that God had a perfect right to exterminate a most guilty people. This is true in a sense. If God had been pleased to visit the Midianites with pestilence, famine or hordes of savages worse than themselves, no one would have charged him with injustice. All who believe in an over-ruling Providence believe that in one way or other God has provided that great wickedness in a nation shall be greatly punished. But that is beside the question altogether; the difficulty is, not that the Midianites were exterminated, but that they were exterminated in an inhuman manner by the Israelites. … The fact is (and it is so obvious that it ought not to have been overlooked) that Midian was overthrown, not because he was given over to an 'obscene idolatry,' wherein he was probably neither much better nor much worse than his neighbors; but because he had made an unprovoked, crafty, and successful attack upon God's people, and had brought thousands of them to a shameful death. The motive which prompted the attack upon them was not horror of their sins, nor fear of contamination, but vengeance; Midian was smitten avowedly 'to avenge the children of Israel' (ver. 2) who had fallen through Baal-Peor, and at the same time 'to avenge the Lord' (ver. 3), who had been obliged to slay his own people."

In the point III, the commentary finds the true justification of the 'atrocities' committed by the Israelite soldiers in putting the moral problem in a historic perspective. The commentator presents the theory of an evolution of moral awareness over the ages, growing from primitive cruelty to modern standards. He says: "Even a bad man will shrink from doing to-day what a good man would have done without the least scruple some centuries ago; and (if the world last) a bad man will be able sincerely to denounce some centuries hence what a good man can bring himself to do with a clear conscience to-day." This position seems to be highly debatable, not only on the point of definition of a "bad man" and a "good man," but also on whether there has really been an improvement in the concept of moral behavior.

Unless we see Israel's acts upon her enemies as acts of God, which may look shocking to us from our twentieth century perspective, but were permissible within the context of that dispensation, we will not be able to deal with the problem, or face God's perfect holiness in an appropriate way. It is not in the difference of mentality from one age to another, but in the fundamental difference between dispensations, that is God's dealing with this world, and the mode of revelation which He chose for particular periods in world history, that the answers to our questions must be sought.

It is also not true, that fear of contamination, but only vengeance was the only motive for the execution of the women. Especially as far as they were concerned, fear of contamination was the overriding motive. Moses' words: "They were the ones who followed Balaam's advice and were the means of turning the Israelites away from the LORD in what happened at Peor, so that a plague struck the LORD's people," clearly indicate that more Israelite men could fall, if those women were kept alive, and be allowed to live among the nation.

Another problem is that we cannot conceive of righteous or holy wars, because of the abuse of the concept in world history. The crusaders traveled to Palestine under the banner "God wills it!" The Inquisition thought that they were pleasing God when they burnt the martyrs at the stake. Even slavery was carried out under a Christian seal, and Hitler's armies had "God with us"[ 1 ] engraved on the buckles of their belts. All this clutters our minds sufficiently to look at this ancient history with skepticism. This does not mean that the moral problems that evolve from this chapter can be easily solved. The execution of the Midianite women was ugly, but it was not an atrocity. All executions are ugly, and death itself is ugly in all its forms. God hates death. Death is the weapon of the enemy; it is the Last Enemy.[ 2 ] But death is not the last word. In some cases physical death is to be preferred over a life that leads to spiritual and eternal death. The death of those women may have been more merciful than appears on the surface.

Above all, we must watch against the tendency to judge God. To doubt God's righteousness in His judgment over Midian, suggests that our standards are higher than God's. If we could see the real enemy behind Midian's plot to destroy Israel, as the carrier of God's revelation in this world, we would realize that the matter goes too far about our understanding of right-and-wrong to be able to argue with the Judge of all the earth.

It seems strange that the Midianites were singled out for this expedition of vengeance, and the Moabites, who were the ones who invited Balaam, were not disturbed. Evidently, the involvement of Moab in the Baal-Peor affair had been much less than that of Midian. This in itself is an indication of the righteousness of God, who did not command a blind vengeance upon the enemies, although Moab had, certainly, not been without guilt. Balaam must have found a more fertile ground for his plan for Israel's moral destruction among the Midianites than among the Moabites.

The Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown Commentary says about this point: "The Midianites had rendered themselves particularly obnoxious by entering into a hostile league with the Amorites [Josh. 13:21]. The Moabites were at this time spared in consideration of Lot [Deut. 2:9], and because the measure of their iniquities was not yet full."

The New Unger's Bible Dictionary writes this about the problem of Moab's apparent exclusion: "In the time of Balaam, Moab (then ruled by Balak son of Zippor) conferred with the elders of Midian in regard to Israel, and the resulting embassy to Balaam consisted of elders both of Moab and Midian [Num. 22:1-7]. In the chapters that relate the prophecies of Balaam (23-24) only Moab is mentioned. In [25:1] it is the daughters of Moab who entice Israel; but in [25:6-15] it is Midian, and in vv. 16-18; [31:1-12] vengeance is executed on Midian. In [31:8-9] it is among the Midianites that Balaam perishes. We may therefore conclude that Midian had a prominent part in the transaction."

The war in this chapter is called "the Lord's vengeance." Vengeance is God's prerogative. In the epistle to the Hebrews, we read: "For we know him who said, 'It is mine to avenge; I will repay,' and again, 'The Lord will judge his people.' "[ 3 ] The psalmist said: "O LORD, the God who avenges, O God who avenges, shine forth. Rise up, O Judge of the earth; pay back to the proud what they deserve."[ 4 ] This verse reads in the KJV: "O LORD God, to whom vengeance belongeth.…" The Bible calls the Day of Judgment, the Day of Vengeance. Isaiah says: "For the LORD has a day of vengeance, a year of retribution, to uphold Zion's cause." What Israel did to Midian was not the paying back of a personal grudge, it was the carrying out of a divine mandate. What was unusual, in this case, was that God asked His own people to do this. But then, this was, partly, the basis for the whole conquest of Canaan. It was the way God carried out judgment in that particular dispensation. The fact that we live in a dispensation of grace, makes it hard for us to understand that God deals differently with the world today than He did 4000 years ago. We have a hard time reconciling the attribute of God's love with the attribute of His wrath. Yet, wrath is as much part of His holiness as love is. When the Apostle Paul writes: "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness…"[ 5 ] he speaks about God's wrath in the present tense, as something that is always there; that is part of His character. Adam Clarke's Commentary says about this verse in Romans: "By orgee … Theou …, the wrath of God, we are not to understand any uneasy passion in the Divine Being; but the displeasure of His righteousness, which is expressed by the punishments inflicted on the ungodly, those who retain not God in their knowledge; and the unrighteous, those whose lives are profligate." What Israel was ordered to do, was part of the cosmic struggle between good and evil, between God and Satan. It was a prelude to the final Day of Judgment that will close of the history of this world.

This may not clear away for us all the problems and moral objections that were voiced by The Pulpit Commentary in a previous quote, but it should help us to put this page of history in its proper perspective. Ultimately, man is responsible for the evil he commits. When human depravity clashes with God's holiness, we cannot blame God for the awful results. We may be grateful that, in our dispensation, we are not involved in the carrying out of judgment, as the Israelites were. I would never volunteer to be an executioner, but that does not mean I am not in favor of capital punishment for those who deserve it.

Verses 19-24 are proof of the fact that God took no pleasure in this mass execution, although He had ordered it. The men who were involved in the operation were considered impure, not only because of their close contact with death, but because of the principle of evil involved. It is true that the impurity caused by a close encounter with death was given as the reason but, as it turns out, not only the people, who had been the executioners, had to be purified, but also the prisoners and the material spoil. Midian's plot to destroy Israel through prostitution had not only been a sexual temptation, but a demonic affair. Behind it all loomed the ugly face of Baal-Peor. This fact was ultimately the reason for the severity of the punishment on those who had, obviously, given themselves irrevocably to the service of demons.

The law on purification after the touching of dead bodies had been given in ch. 19:11-22. There it was stipulated that the period of purification lasted for seven days, and that the water of cleansing had to be applied on the third and the seventh day. Both the application of the water of cleansing, as well the days on which it had to be applied, are full of symbolic significance. The water of cleansing was prepared with the ashes of a red heifer, that had been killed outside the camp. The preparation of the cleansing water in itself was full of rich symbolism. The killing of the heifer symbolized Christ's death on the hill of Golgotha, outside the city of Jerusalem. The application of the water on the third day connects it to the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, the application on the seventh day indicates that it was to have its effect for the duration of life.

Some of the spoil had to be purified with fire, that is: it passed under the divine judgment, without being destroyed by it. The application of the water was a form of judgment also, but the judgment did not destroy the individual either. Some other creature had been destroyed in the process. The heifer, the ashes of which had been used in the preparation of the water, had been killed. Even the captives were purified by the death of the heifer. They had been linked to the nation and to the system that stood for demonic evil, but now they were purified by the water that symbolized the death of the Savior of the world.

In the verses 25-47 we are given an inventory of the spoil, and the way it was to be divided. The whole lot, people, animals, and material goods, was to be divided among the soldiers and the rest of the people, one half for each group. This meant that one half was given to the 12,000 men who had gone out in the battle, and the other half to the nation, which consisted of several million people. So, proportionally, the soldiers profited immensely. They were also taxed very lightly: they only gave 1/500^th of everything to the service of the tabernacle, and the people had to give 1/50^th. Matthew Henry's Commentary says about this: "That yet the 12,000 that went to the battle had as much for their share as the whole congregation (which were fifty times as many) had for theirs; so that the particular persons of the soldiery had a much better share than any of their brethren that tarried at home: and good reason they should. The greater pains we take, and the greater hazards we run, in the service of God and our generation, the greater will our recompense be at last; for God is not unrighteous to forget the work and labour of love."

The very detailed list of inventory seems uninspiring reading. The number of animals is impressive, and the advantage of this spoil for each of the soldiers is overwhelming. For example, the total head of sheep for the army was 337,500, which was divided among 12,000 men, giving to each individual 28,125 sheep, of which 1/500^th had to be given to the Lord, leaving him approximately 28,120 sheep. This made each soldier rich overnight. It also seems redundant that the whole list is given twice, once for the soldiers, and once for the whole community. We can deduct from this God's eye for detail, for which the birds of the sky are kept track off, and the hairs of our head are counted.[ 6 ]

The last verses of this chapter, the verses 48-54, give a rather moving account of the reaction of the commanding officers of the army, upon the discovery that there had been no Israelite casualties in this raid. In their gratitude to the Lord for sparing the lives of each one of them, they brought all the spoil in gold jewelry. The NIV puts the value of that at 16,750 shekels. TLB put this down as a value of more than $300,000. They brought this gold as an atonement for their souls. The Hebrew word used here is nephesh. This does not mean that they could buy their salvation. Jesus' words stand: "What can a man give in exchange for his soul?"[ 7 ] But it shows the appreciation of those men for the fact that God had spared their lives. They were under no obligation to give it all to the Lord. They could simply have tithed their portion, and lived happily ever after. But their hearts were too full of gratitude to keep the golden trinkets to themselves. Those men had their priorities straight.

[ 1 ] Gott mit uns

[ 2 ] See I Cor. 15:26

[ 3 ] Heb. 10:30

[ 4 ] Ps. 94:1,2

[ 5 ] Rom. 1:18

[ 6 ] See Matt. 10:29.30

[ 7 ] Matt. 16:26^b