The Captives

Studies in Numbers

III The Finale

B The Celebrations

3 The Captives, Text: 31:1-24

Title: A Holy War

INTRODUCTION

This is Moses’ last hurrah. He has already been warned of his departure before Israel enters the promised land. But he goes out with a bang. He gets to see the vengeance of the Lord visited on an archenemy, the Midianites. Verses 1 and 2, The Lord said to Moses, “Take vengeance on the Midianites for the Israelites. After that, you will be gathered to your people.” The old lawgiver has for his last achievement to punish the idolater. We are not familiar with the term “Holy War” in our post-modern society, however wasn’t the Second World War, a Holy war against Naziism and Hitler? And are we not now engaged in a Holy War against Islamic Terrorists? In the middle ages the Christians had no qualms about calling the crusades against Islamism a “Holy War.” Extermination may offend our sensibilities, but in a “Holy War,” Extermination may be the only solution. Let us consider the power, the plunder, and the purification.

I THE POWER

We are talking here about the power of holiness. This is demonstrated first in the numbers and also the rules. First, the holiness is demonstrated in the greatly reduced numbers. Only 12,000 men went forth to battle. This is a fraction of the armies of Israel. The greatly reduced number suggests that the battle was not theirs, but God’s. Verses 3-5, So Moses said to the people, “Arm some of your men to go to war against the Midianites so that they may carry out the Lord’s vengeance on them. Send into battle a thousand men from each of the tribes of Israel.” So twelve thousand men armed for battle, a thousand from each tribe, were supplied from the clans of Israel. The second thing that reminds us that this was a holy war is that they went into battle with the Priests and Levites going before them, verse 6, Moses sent them into battle, a thousand from each tribe, along with Phinehas son of Eleazar, the priest, who took with him articles from the sanctuary and the trumpets for signaling. This reminds me of pictures of Scottish Highlanders going into battle with bagpipes playing. It’s a thrilling sight. As the trumpets blow we know the power in battle is the Lord’s. the appointment of Phinehas, whose zeal against the sin of the Midianites had made him conspicuous, as a priest, and with the instruments and trumpets to go with the army, not as a military leader, and the remarkable preservation of the warlike host, all show that the character of the war was peculiar, that it was judicial, that its ultimate purpose was the safety of the people of God in its highest aspects and life; and that it could not have been secured in any other way.

II THE PLUNDER

And as we read in verses 7-12, they brought everything that they had not exterminated, people and possessions, to Moses and Eleazar, as a tribute to the Lord. They fought against Midian, as the Lord commanded Moses, and killed every man. Among their victims were Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur and Reba—the five kings of Midian. They also killed Balaam son of Beor with the sword. The Israelites captured the Midianite women and children and took all the Midianite herds, flocks and goods as plunder. They burned all the towns where the Midianites had settled, as well as all their camps. They took all the plunder and spoils, including the people and animals, and brought the captives, spoils and plunder to Moses and Eleazar the priest and the Israelite assembly at their camp on the plains of Moab, by the Jordan across from Jericho. As to the complete annihilation we should know the Midianites were a people that had turned its public morals into a destructive immorality, because it had abandoned all reverence for a personal God and personal life, and sunk into the dark, magic sin, the sin of deifying the lust of the flesh, and into death, its fruit. That’s why Balaam was successful among them. The Canaanites could not live as a people under Israel without perverting Israel. But there was a serious problem, as we read in verses 13-18, Moses, Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the community went to meet them outside the camp. Moses was angry with the officers of the army—the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds—who returned from the battle. “Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them. “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. Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man. Moses was righteously angry that the extermination was neither complete nor without suspicion. The mature women were prostitutes with whom the Israelite men had previously consorted. And in that culture it was the duty of the male descendants, the boys, to rise up and avenge their Fathers’ deaths. The Rabbis’ explanation of the girls was that they were prepubescent and needed protection, and so, were not killed.

III THE PURIFICATION

The remaining verses in this text, 19-24 speak of the purification, and Moses says, “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. Purify every garment as well as everything made of leather, goat hair or wood.” 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: Gold, silver, bronze, iron, tin, lead 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. On the seventh day wash your clothes and you will be clean. Then you may come into the camp.” As Moses declares, this is nothing other than the law already prescribed in the past. The law is not obsessive because God does not suffer from our psychological deficiencies. What it does is enforce the idea to Israel of the exceeding filth and pollution of sin and idolatry. Contact with heathens pollutes. This is not a public health regulation though it may have had that corollary effect. It is a religious and doctrinal lesson about the exceeding sinfulness of the idolatrous enemies of Israel with whom they are about to become neighbors. It is easier to wash away the filth of mud-wrestling than to deal with the pollution of sin. In fact as I mentioned in the sermon on chapters 28 and 29, in the words of Isaac Watts are relevant, “Not all the blood of beasts On Jewish altars slain, Could give the guilty conscience peace, Or wash away the stain. But Christ, the heav’nly Lamb, Takes all our sins away; A sacrifice of nobler name, And richer blood than they. My faith would lay her hand, On that dear head of Thine, While like a penitent I stand, And there confess my sin.” If Israel did not see their sin they could never be forgiven, and many were not because when He came they rejected the Heavenly Lamb.