This chapter chronicles a war that God commanded the Israelites to fight, against the Midianites who had tried to corrupt them in an earlier section of the book. There are many things here that stand out, and I may have missed some, but here are the ones that caught my attention most:
- Only 12,000 men were sent out to fight (verse 5) - not even a tenth of Israel's full military power at the time. In addition, all of them survived (verse 49)!
- When the soldiers returned with all the women and children of those they fought, Moses commanded that the male children and all women who were not virgins be killed. This sort of massacre seems shocking by our standards today, but what is key here - and I think will be repeated in the taking of the Holy Land - is that leaving these people alive meant a continued threat to Israel. When God truly is the one ordering these acts then they are acceptable; the risk is when people claim to be doing His will and are not.
- Even though there were only 12,000 soldiers involved in the war, they are given 16,000 young virgin women as part of the spoils. That seems odd, since it is more women than there were men and likely many of the men already had wives. I wonder if they used them as slaves, or if they perhaps gave them to sons for wives.
- Balaam was among the men killed in the fighting. I would have thought, based on his actions in blessing Israel, that he would not have been killed - but further reading in this chapter implicates him in the plot to tempt the Israelites away from God. Perhaps he had realized that although he could not curse them God Himself would turn on them if they strayed from Him.
Voting on Laws
15 years ago
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2 comments:
Why do you think the Israelites would not have had more than one wife? Solomon had seven hundred!!
When you don't have things like the modern economic system to worry about and when you really understand hardship, like I think the Israelites did at this point in history, there's probably no reason not to have a large family.
I think there is really a disconnect between the way God provided a path for men in the Old Testament versus the New. Some people would say that is obvious I guess, but I think it is one of the most interesting parts of the Bible. I think God still wants the same things from us (which is why it's interesting to see how God dealt DIRECTLY with men in the Old Testament), but I think that he has offered us a new way to for us to fulfill his desires through Jesus. My understanding is that Jesus is our priest, and he is in a position of authority over us. He intercedes with God for us, and since we can not hope to be righteous, we have to depend on him.
Oh, and BTW - If God ever tells me and you to go kill some people, I'll be right out there killing them to the best of my (admittedly weak) ability with you William :)
I don't think that will ever happen though, because Jesus said to love your neighbor as yourself and to love your enemy - to pray for and bless him. I don't think that you can bless someone with a bullet ;)
You are quite right - multiple wives was much more common then than it is now; one could even say that multiple wives are more common in that part of the world (the middle-east) than in the western world, since I understand it is still common among Muslims. I hadn't thought of that when I was writing, but it does make sense.
I also agree that God would likely not instruct someone to kill these days, since as you pointed out Jesus' teachings were focused on reaching out to people in love. When God was leading the Israelites at this point in their history it was not to reach out to the people in the Promised Land or to convert them, but to judge them and to clear a space where the Israelites would not have nearby neighbors tempting them away from God.
Someday, though, if the events in Revelation 19:11 and following refer to humans (as opposed to angels) we may someday be called on to go to war.
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