Context No. 4 of 4322 · Numbers
Context · Reflection
Numbers 31:1-16: in context
1The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2“Avenge the children of Israel on the Midianites. Afterward you shall be gathered to your people.” 3Moses spoke to the people, saying, “Arm men from among you for war, that they may go against Midian, to execute the LORD’s vengeance on Midian. 4You shall send one thousand out of every tribe, throughout all the tribes of Israel, to the war.” 5So there were delivered, out of the thousands of Israel, a thousand from every tribe, twelve thousand armed for war. 6Moses sent them, one thousand of every tribe, to the war with Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest, to the war, with the vessels of the sanctuary and the trumpets for the alarm in his hand. 7They fought against Midian, as the LORD commanded Moses. They killed every male. 8They killed the kings of Midian with the rest of their slain: Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba, the five kings of Midian. They also killed Balaam the son of Beor with the sword. 9The children of Israel took the women of Midian captive with their little ones; and all their livestock, all their flocks, and all their goods, they took as plunder. 10All their cities in the places in which they lived, and all their encampments, they burned with fire. 11They took all the captives, and all the plunder, both of man and of animal. 12They brought the captives with the prey and the plunder, to Moses, and to Eleazar the priest, and to the congregation of the children of Israel, to the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by the Jordan at Jericho. 13Moses and Eleazar the priest, with all the princes of the congregation, went out to meet them outside of the camp. 14Moses was angry with the officers of the army, the captains of thousands and the captains of hundreds, who came from the service of the war. 15Moses said to them, “Have you saved all the women alive? 16Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and so the plague was among the congregation of the LORD.
The book of Numbers covers Israel's forty years in the wilderness between Egypt and the promised land. By this chapter they are camped on the plains of Moab, across the Jordan from Jericho, near the end of the journey. The chapter opens with a war of vengeance against Midian, a people Israel knew well. The Midianites were nomadic traders of the northwest Arabian desert, and Israel's own story tied them close. Midian was a son of Abraham (Genesis 25:1-2), and Moses himself had fled to Midian as a young man, married a Midianite woman, and shepherded the flocks of his Midianite father-in-law, the priest Jethro.
So why the war? The answer is one chapter back. At a place called Peor, Midianite and Moabite women had drawn Israelite men into their feasts and into worshipping a local god, Baal of Peor, and a plague followed that killed twenty-four thousand (Numbers 25). This chapter names who was behind it. The women had acted on the counsel of Balaam (31:16), the foreign seer hired to curse Israel who, unable to curse them, taught their enemies to corrupt them instead. He is killed in this campaign along with the five kings of Midian (31:8).
When the soldiers come back with the women as captives, Moses is angry, because those were the women from Peor. His anger is not about land or plunder but about what those women carried back, the worship that had already killed twenty-four thousand. What have I made peace with and let back in, that once did me real harm?
Sources
- Numbers 25: the apostasy at Baal-Peor, the plague of twenty-four thousand, the reason given for the war
- Genesis 25:1-2 with Exodus 2:15-22 and 18:1: Midian as a son of Abraham, and Moses's Midianite wife and father-in-law Jethro
- Numbers 22-24 with 31:8 and 31:16: Balaam, hired to curse Israel, blamed for the counsel behind Peor and killed in this campaign