Numbers 31 Revenge

seekeroftruth

Well-Known Member
Numbers 31:13 Moses, Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the community went to meet them outside the camp. 14 Moses was angry with the officers of the army—the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds—who returned from the battle.

15 “Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them. 16 “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the Lord in the Peor incident, so that a plague struck the Lord’s people. 17 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, 18 but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.

19 “Anyone who has killed someone or touched someone who was killed must stay outside the camp seven days. On the third and seventh days you must purify yourselves and your captives. 20 Purify every garment as well as everything made of leather, goat hair or wood.”

21 Then Eleazar the priest said to the soldiers who had gone into battle, “This is what is required by the law that the Lord gave Moses: 22 Gold, silver, bronze, iron, tin, lead 23 and anything else that can withstand fire must be put through the fire, and then it will be clean. But it must also be purified with the water of cleansing. And whatever cannot withstand fire must be put through that water. 24 On the seventh day wash your clothes and you will be clean. Then you may come into the camp.”​

According to my research, some are very upset about verses 17 & 18. The idea of killing boys and women is not a good thing. It appears, however, that it could indeed be Biblical. I have to remind myself that the Midianite women were used by Balaam, the prophet for hire, to spread the destructive pagan means of worshiping their little gods to the Israelites. That brought on a horrible plague that killed 24,000 people. It sounds to me like the Midianite women had some kind of sexually transmitted diseases..... but I haven't found that in writing anywhere.

So.... here's the commentary from the easy English site.

Probably, the soldiers expected Moses to praise them because they had defeated the Midianites. Instead, he was angry. This was because the soldiers had brought back the women. And it was the women who had caused the Israelites to worship the Midianites’ false god (Numbers 25:16-18).

It seems that, before the battle, Moses had ordered the soldiers to kill all the Midianites. But the soldiers had not done this. So Moses ordered them to kill the women and their sons immediately. He allowed the young girls who had not had sex to live. They had not caused the Israelites to sin at Peor. So they could marry the male Israelites. Or they could work for the Israelites. Then they would learn to follow the Israelites’ religion and to worship the one real God.

This may seem cruel to us. But this was a holy war. God had ordered the Israelites to punish the Midianites. The Midianites were guilty because they had persuaded the Israelites to reject God. The Israelites were God’s special people. So they had to keep themselves*clean and holy because God is holy completely.

Therefore, it was a very serious sin to worship false gods. The Midianites had caused the Israelites to do this. So the Midianites had caused God to punish them by means of this holy war. That was why the Midianite women had to die. The Israelites had to carry out God’s punishment against the Midianites for what happened at Peor. The Israelites had suffered God’s punishment already (Numbers 25:9).

However, we must remember that Jesus taught us to love our enemies. Jesus showed his love for his enemies when he forgave them. He did not fight when they hurt him. He died on their behalf. So we know that we must never use the idea of a holy war to attack our enemies. Holy wars happened only until the Israelites had settled into the Promised Land.

Anyone who had touched a dead body was unclean (Numbers 19:11-13). So the soldiers and their prisoners had to remain outside the camp during 7 days. During the third (3rd) and the seventh (7th) days, both the soldiers and their prisoners had to wash themselves. Also, they had to wash their clothes and anything that they had used during the battle. Eleazar told them to put metal objects into fire. Then, the soldiers had to put special water on these metals. This ceremony made these metal objects clean. After 7 days, the soldiers could enter the camp.​

Here's what the Apologetics Press has to say about it.

The allegation that the Israelite men spared the young girls in order to rape them is nothing but baseless supposition predicated upon a lack of biblical knowledge. In the custom of the time, marriages were conducted at a young age. Therefore, the reference to the young girls who had not “known man by lying with him” would indicate that they were very young, likely under the age of twelve. These girls were too young to be able to lead the men of Israel away from Jehovah; therefore, these girls were allowed to live. As to raping them, it is more logical to assume that they wanted these girls for servants. This would be similar to Joshua 9, where Joshua allowed the Gibeonites to live in compelled servitude to the Israelites. Moreover, it would have been sinful for the Israelite men to rape the Midianite girls because rape was (and still is) abhorrent to God (Deuteronomy 22:23-28, esp. 25).

The simple answer to the questions surrounding Numbers 31 is that God ordered the Midianites to be killed in Numbers 25:17-18. When the army did not carry out this order at the time of the Midianite defeat, it was carried out in a delayed fashion when the army returned with the captives. As to Moses allowing the young girls to remain alive, that was a judgment call from the man with God’s authority over the Israelites.​

So.... killing boys and women is Biblical.

:coffee:
 
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