Numbers Chapter 31: Victory over Midian
Numbers 31:1-54
Day 89 of a recommended “stay at home” policy
for our area. But many people are not staying at home. They go out, some with masks, some without. There
is considerable confusion about what works, what doesn’t; what’s open, what isn’t;
and what’s mandatory and what isn’t. Welcome to the new order of mass (and
mask) muddling. We stay the course, going about our business as best we can. On
our daily walks each morning, at a rather fast clip, it is interesting to watch
people of all ages clear the way for us, making sure there is no way they will
come anywhere within six (but usually to be safe they make it easily 10 or 15)
feet away. Yet the government says we
can now meet with ten people at a time without social distancing, and
interestingly enough each of us can meet with nine different people each
time. So, where’s the logic in all this? There isn’t any. But there’s always logic and
justice and love in God’s Word, so we continue to study it. Thanks for joining us.
The Passage
31 Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Take
full vengeance for the sons of Israel on the Midianites; afterward you will be gathered
to your people.” 3 Moses spoke to the people, saying, “Arm men from among you for the
war, that they may [a]go
against Midian to execute the Lord’s vengeance on Midian. 4 A
thousand from each tribe of all the tribes of Israel you shall send to the war.” 5 So
there were [b]furnished
from the thousands of Israel, a thousand from each tribe, twelve thousand armed
for war. 6 Moses sent them, a thousand from each tribe, to the war, and
Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest, to the war with them, and
the holy vessels and the trumpets for the alarm in his hand. 7 So
they made war against Midian, just as the Lord had
commanded Moses, and they killed every male. 8 They
killed the kings of Midian along with the rest
of their slain: Evi and Rekem and Zur
and Hur and Reba, the five kings of Midian; they also killed Balaam
the son of Beor with the sword. 9 The
sons of Israel captured the women of Midian and their little ones; and all
their cattle and all their flocks and all their goods they plundered. 10 Then
they burned all their cities where they lived and all their camps with fire. 11 They
took all the spoil and all the prey, both of man and of beast. 12 They
brought the captives and the prey and the spoil to Moses, and to Eleazar the
priest and to the congregation of the sons of Israel, to the camp at the plains
of Moab, which are by the Jordan opposite Jericho.
13 Moses and Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the
congregation went out to meet them outside the camp. 14 Moses
was angry with the officers of the army, the captains of thousands and the
captains of hundreds, who had come from service in the war. 15 And
Moses said to them, “Have you [c]spared all
the women? 16 Behold, these [d]caused
the sons of Israel, through the [e]counsel
of Balaam, to [f]trespass
against the Lord in the matter of Peor, so the plague was among the congregation of
the Lord. 17 Now
therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has
known man [g]intimately. 18 But
all the [h]girls
who have not known man [i]intimately, [j]spare
for yourselves. 19 And you, camp outside the camp seven days; whoever has killed any
person and whoever has touched any slain, purify yourselves, you and your
captives, on the third day and on the seventh day. 20 You
shall purify for yourselves every garment and every article of [k]leather
and all the work of goats’ hair, and all articles of wood.”
21 Then Eleazar the priest said to the men of war who had gone to
battle, “This is the statute of the law which the Lord has
commanded Moses: 22 only the gold and the silver, the bronze, the iron, the tin and
the lead, 23 everything that can stand the fire, you shall pass through the
fire, and it shall be clean, but it shall be purified with water
for impurity. But whatever cannot stand the fire you shall pass through the
water. 24 And you shall wash your clothes on the seventh day and be clean,
and afterward you may enter the camp.”
Verses 25-54 describe how the spoils taken from the
slaughter were divided.
Footnotes
- Numbers 31:3 Lit be
- Numbers 31:5 Lit delivered
- Numbers 31:15 Lit let...live
- Numbers 31:16 Lit were to
- Numbers 31:16 Lit word
- Numbers 31:16 Possibly defect from the Lord
- Numbers 31:17 Lit by lying with a man
- Numbers 31:18 Lit female children
- Numbers 31:18 Lit by lying with a man
- Numbers 31:18 Lit keep alive
- Numbers 31:20 Or skin
Thoughts on the Passage
I must confess that this is one
of the most difficult passages for me to read and/or study. The reasons are
many as you’ll see in my comments below. It is a history of a “holy war” and it
contains all the atrocities of war.
To begin with we have God’s
instructions to Moses to “Take full vengeance for the sons of Israel on the
Midianites”. I don’t know what God may have had in mind when He used that phrase
“full vengeance”. But it sure sounds like “no holds barred” to me. Doesn’t
sound like a loving God, many would claim. We must remember that God is also “just”
and we will understand His reasoning for that instruction as we study the
chapter further.
Secondly, in verse 2, we note
that God instructed Moses to “go against Midian (in order) to execute the Lord’s
vengeance on Midian.” This was God’s war, no one else’s. As difficult as it may
be for us to accept that, we must again look for God’s reasons for doing so.
And we’ll see that His reason made sense to a Holy God and thus should make
sense to us, His people. We also know that because it was His war, victory was
guaranteed. [And note also at the end of the chapter we learn that in this case
success was total – not a single soldier of Israel’s was lost in the battle.] Vengeance
when undertaken by God is a positive and necessary thing. It becomes evil when
we undertake it. It is similar to the idea that we are not to take the law into
our own hands in our society today.
Thirdly, God is telling Moses to
lead his people in this war with the Midianites, after which Moses would “gathered
to (his) people”, although this was not an “immediately afterwards”. This isn’t,
“Hey Moses, just do this one more thing in your role as leader, and then you
can retire.” No, it’s “do this one more thing and then you will die.” What kind
of motivation was that? How did Moses do it? Well, the answer is twofold. First,
we know the character of Moses and his commitment to obeying God and having
complete trust in Him. Second, he realized that being gathered to his people
was not such a bad deal under the circumstances after all. What a role model he
is for us. He knew his role; he knew when he had accomplished his role; and he
understand that God’s fairness and His word had to be fulfilled.
We also note in verse 6 that
those that went to war included Phinehas the son of Eleazar the high priest
(after the death of Aaron) and his priests. And they took with them the holy
vessels and the trumpets with which to sound the alarm for the troops.
The Israelites engaged the Midianites
and killed every male, including the five kings of Midian, and Balaam (which we
remember was sought by Balak to curse Israel). He did not get his wish to die like
the righteous because he wasn’t righteous. He was greedy and so he died with
the unrighteous.
Now what the army of Israel did
was capture the women and children, and all the cattle and flocks, and also
plundered their possessions. They then burned everything to the ground. And
they return home with their captives and the spoils. This was all in accordance
with the custom of the day with respect to battles.
Matthew Henry points out that
their triumphant march home was met with great respect when even the very aged
Moses walked out of the camp to meet them. But then. . .
When Moses saw them, he was
angry with their officers, and here comes another hard part, because he saw
that they had “spared all the women”. Henry says he may well have been moved
with a holy indignation at the sight of them, for you remember the law in the
case of whoredom was that the adulterer and the adulteress should surely be put
to death. God had taken care of the former, now He wanted the latter to be
taken care of. They were supposed to have died as well. When God says, “full
vengeance”, He means “full vengeance”. And then Moses gives us God’s reasoning
for all of this when he says in verse 16 that it was the women who caused the
sons of Israel, “through the counsel of Balaam”, to sin against the Lord which
in turn caused the plague among the Israelites. God had His reasons for what He
wanted done and Moses knew it.
Also, as Matthew Henry reminds
us, God had already taken vengeance on his own people for being involved in
this whole mess with the Midianites – remember the plague. Now He had to
complete His exercise of justice on those that caused the problem. Furthermore,
it is possible that God may have wanted to allow Moses the privilege of seeing
revenge on the Midianites as he had been very angry at what had happened earlier
as a result.
According to David Guzik, Moses
may have also been angry “because
the children of Israel failed to see the great danger of sexual immorality and
idolatry posed by these women who before led the men of Israel into these exact
sins.”
So therefore, Moses now
instructs the officers to kill all the male children they took captive and
every woman who is not a virgin. And he offered them the virgins for
themselves. Wow. They never taught me all this in Sunday School. What was Moses
doing here? Why on earth would he give the Israelite men ungodly women to sleep
with? Or was it that these women were simply to become their slaves? And why
would kill young males? On this question, Guzik writes: “This was harsh, but done with the
understanding that in that ancient culture, the boys would have grown into men
with the solemn responsibility to avenge their father's death and to perpetuate
Midianite culture - which in itself was anti-God.” And Robert Jamieson
indicates that God had intended this war to be a war of extermination of an
evil idolatrous people.
We stop here for a moment, because no doubt this action of
God’s through the Israelites is a very hard concept for us. Chuck Smith suggests
we need to understand a little about the culture of these and especially their
religious practices. Marriage vows meant nothing. Bestiality was practiced.
Human and especially child sacrifices to their gods were the order of the day.
And God didn’t want them to pollute His children, the Israelites.
Of course, anyone who had killed
any person or touched the dead were deemed unclean and had to remain outside
the camp for seven days, and they along with their captives had to be purified
on the third and seventh days of the isolation. And that included every piece
of clothing as well as other articles (verse 20).
Verses 21-24 explain how Eleazar
had them put everything through the fire, and only the precious metals that
could withstand the fire would be considered ‘clean’.
In the section that describes how
the spoils were to be divided, we note that everyone who went out to war was to
get their share (50%) and the other half would be shared among the rest of the
congregation. But a tax was to be levied on those things and given to Eleazar
as an offering to the Lord (one for every 500 from the warriors and one for
every 50 from the congregation’s half). In total there were over 800,000
animals that were captured (verses 32-34) and 32,000 virgins (verse 35). And if I have this right, one wonders what
the priest and his family would do with 352 virgins (32 from the warriors’
16,000; and 320 for the congregation’s 16,000). No answer is provided to my knowledge.
The chapter ends with all the
men who went out to war bringing to Moses and the Eleazar all the gold that
they had taken in their plundering. And they did this because they were so
thankful that not one single Israelite was lost in this battle.
What are the lessons we need to
learn from this passage today?
First, what wars are we
fighting? Are they ours or are they God’s? If they are ours, there is no
guarantee we’ll win. If they are God’s, there is no way He’ll lose.
Second, that God’s way may not
always seem right to us, but there is always validity in it. It is always based
on one or more of three of His attributes as the Almighty Creator Father God:
a) His execution of justice, b) His keeping of His word, and c) His love for
His children. What God was doing here was exercising all three – He wanted
justice for the sins of the Midianites, He kept His word as to what would
happen, and He did it because He loved His people and wanted to protect them
for the future. We can’t miss this.
And thirdly, this whole scenario
is a foreshadowing, in my opinion, of exactly how God will deal with the world
as a whole in due time. Justice will be served, His promises will be kept, and
His people will be saved. That’s our God.
It would be great if you would share your thoughts or questions on this blog in the comments section below or on social media.
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