Numbers 31:1-7, “The
LORD spoke to Moses, saying, (2) "Avenge the people of Israel on the
Midianites. Afterward you shall be gathered to your people." (3) So
Moses spoke to the people, saying, "Arm men from among you for the war,
that they may go against Midian to execute the LORD's vengeance on Midian. (4)
You shall send a thousand from each of the tribes of Israel to the
war." (5) So there were provided, out of the thousands
of Israel, a thousand from each tribe, twelve thousand armed for war. (6)
And Moses sent them to the war, a thousand from each tribe, together
with Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest, with the vessels of the sanctuary
and the trumpets for the alarm in his hand.
(7) They warred against Midian,
as the LORD commanded Moses, and killed every male.”
We need to back
track a bit in order to understand Numbers 31 and God’s instruction for the
people of Israel to go and war against the Midianites. This all starts back in
Numbers 22, when the Moabites and the Midianites collude together to destroy
the nation of Israel. They seek out Balaam and would have Balaam invoke a
divine curse upon Israel, a curse that would guarantee them victory over Israel.
But this effort fails spectacularly, as God’s confronts Balaam and leads Balaam
to bless Israel. Having failed to overcome the people of Israel, the Moabites
and Midianites then resort to something more deceitful. They seek to draw the
Israelites into intermarriage, and into idol worship. This plan proves
successful to a measure, numerous Israelite men are enticed and take Midianite
women as their wives. These men not only take these foreign women as their
wives, they also take their gods, Baal and engage in idol worship. We read of
this in Numbers 25, where we also read of God’s judgement against the
Israelites. God not only commands these men to be struck down and killed, God
also strikes the nation with a plague.
This is the
background of Numbers 31. Upon reading this chapter, it may appear to be quite
drastic. God commands that all the men, all the male children, and all the women,
apart from those who were still virgins, are to be killed without exception. It
is important that we understand two facts about this chapter.
Firstly, there
is the aspect of God’s justice. The people of Midian had deliberately sought to
curse, deceive and mislead the people of Israel. Their intentions were not
noble or honourable, they wanted to see Israel either defeated in battle and
slaughtered, or sucked into, assimilated into their own nation.
What is
significant and worth noting, is that prior to God’s justice being carried out
against Midian, God deals first with the people Israel. God punished and
severely disciplined His people first, before He came against any others. You
could say He started in His own house, with His own people and once He has purified
His house, His people, He then went out against the other nations. Therefore,
this is not a case of one-sided justice, whereby God lets one party off the
hook and severely punishes another. Both were punished in accordance to God’s
justice. Both the Israelites and the Midianites lost, and lost heavily through
their common sin in this matter. God will always punish the guilty, and this
case both Israel and Midian were guilty.
Secondly, there
are the aspects of God’s honour and glory. The people of Midian were
idolatrous, they worshipped Baal, and continued to worship Baal even when God
clearly revealed Himself through Balaam. Furthermore, they sought to impose
idol worship upon those around them, the Israelites. In their worship of Baal
and seeking to impose it upon the Israelites, they were dishonouring God, they were
stripping God of His position, person, people and glory, and then giving it to
something else, to something made through the invention of man’s mind. There is
nothing more dishonouring to God, nothing that strips God of His glory more
than the worship of gods made up out of our own imaginations. It is the
ultimate rejection, denial, and rebellion of God. In fact, it is to deny the
very existence of God, and to proclaim the existence, and deity of another god
of human invention. It is for these reasons that God is stirred to such wrath
and anger against idolatry. It is for these reasons that God will confront,
destroy and eternally condemn all those who worship any other god. It is for
these reasons that God’s wrath and judgement will come upon the Canaanites when
Israel enter into the Promised Land. It is for these reasons that God’s wrath
came upon the Midianites and He used the people of Israel as His instrument of
justice and punishment. We need to take note of the fact that the people of
Israel did not go out again Midian as a result of their own choice. God
commanded them to go out and gave them very specific instructions. This is a
work of God, executing His justice against sinful, immoral and idolatrous
people.
We must not
underestimate how seriously God takes holiness and justice, as well as His
glory and honour as the only true God. It is when we downplay the importance of
holiness, or see something as more desirable than God that we find ourselves in
dangerous territory. God will always act against sin, and will always defend
and re-establish the glory and honour of His name and position. As believers in
Jesus Christ we should love God’s holiness and desire to imitate it, as well as
having a deep love and reverence for the glory and honour of God. In fact,
these should be our principle delights and desires. The more we love God’s
holiness and strive after it, the deeper our love and reverence for God’s glory
and honour, the greater we will be able to fight against and resist sin. Our
reverence, worship, respect and understanding of God will grow more and more
true. Greatest of all, the more precious and wonderful our salvation will
become to us, for the more we understand holiness and justice, the more we will
understand our sinfulness. The more we understand the glory and honour of God,
the more we will be in awe of the fact that God should descend to this earth in
human flesh to suffer and die for our sake.
Glorious, most honourable, just and holy God, we
humbly bow before You and confess our unworthiness. How gracious, good and
patient You are with us, for on a daily basis we chase after many other things
and hold them as being more precious than You. We entertain sin and resist
holiness with remarkable ease. Forgive us, we pray. May Your holiness, and
justice, Your glory and honour grow more precious, valuable, lovely and
desirable to us. May they become our chief delights. Amen.
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