Victory, Captives, and the Uncleanness of War

The campaign was ordered once already, in 25:17: “Vex the Midianites, and smite them.” Five chapters of census, inheritance, calendar and vows have come between the order and its execution, and this verse picks up the thread where it was left.

The Hebrew doubles the idea: “avenge the vengeance of the children of Israel”. Moses’ last campaign is set by the LORD as the final thing before his death, and the reason was given in 25:18: “they vex you with their wiles”.

“Arm some of yourselves” is hechaltsu, “let men be drawn out and equipped”. The same root gives chalutsim, the armed men who will cross ahead of their brothers in 32:17–21. The soldiers are picked out of the people, not the whole people sent.

Twelve thousand men is about two in every hundred of the 601,730 just counted in chapter 26. The campaign is deliberately small, and it takes the same number from Simeon, the smallest tribe, as from Judah, the largest.

“Were delivered” translates a rare verb, masar, which in the Hebrew Bible occurs only here and in verse 16, where Midian’s women are said “to commit trespass” (limsor ma’al). The men are handed over to war in the same word used for the betrayal they are sent to avenge.

“The trumpets to blow” are the silver trumpets of 10:9: “if ye go to war... ye shall blow an alarm with the trumpets; and ye shall be remembered before the LORD”. Phinehas goes rather than his father the high priest, perhaps because Eleazar had to keep clear of the dead (Leviticus 21:11); that reason is an inference.

“All the males” means the men of these Midianite settlements. Midian is back in strength in Judges 6, oppressing Israel for seven years, so the campaign was against the clans bound up with Peor, not the end of the whole people.

Joshua 13:21–22 names the same five kings as “dukes of Sihon”, vassal chieftains of the Amorite king already defeated in 21:24, and adds that Balaam was “the soothsayer”. Josephus (Antiquities 4.161) says Rekem was the old name of Petra.

“Goods” is chayil, which means wealth, and also strength and army. The officers of verse 14 are the officers “of the host”, of the chayil. The army of Israel takes away the chayil of Midian.

“Goodly castles” is tirotam, a word for encampments, circles of tents or stone walled enclosures. It is used in Genesis 25:16 of the “castles” of Ishmael’s sons. Midian’s strongholds were herdsmen’s camps, not fortresses.

Three nouns carry the chapter’s accounting: shevi, “captives”, for people; malqoach, “prey”, for everything living that was taken; and shalal, “spoil”, for goods. This verse gathers the last two, and the pairing “of men and of beasts” will run through the arithmetic to come.

The procession heads for “the camp at the plains of Moab”, but it never enters. The next verse has Moses coming out to meet it, and verse 19 keeps the soldiers outside for seven days. The army is brought to the edge of the camp and stopped there.

Moses goes “without the camp” because the returning men had touched the dead, and 5:2–3 required anyone defiled by the dead to be put out of the camp. The leaders of Israel cross the line to meet the army rather than let it cross to them.

Captains of thousands and captains of hundreds are the ranks set up on Jethro’s advice in Exodus 18:21–25. “Officers of the host” are pequdei hechayil, the “appointed ones”, from the same verb as the census. Moses’ anger is directed at the men with authority, not at the ranks.

The verb is chayah in its causative form, “let live”, and it is the verb that returns in verse 18, “keep alive”. The whole quarrel turns on one word: whom the officers let live, and whom Moses will allow to live.

“Trespass” is ma’al, a breach of faith, the word used in 5:12 of a wife who is unfaithful to her husband. “The matter of Peor” repeats 25:18. Revelation 2:14 later reads this verse as saying Balaam “taught Balac to cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel”.

Deuteronomy 20:13–14 later sets the rule for a city far off: the men are killed, but “the women, and the little ones” are taken. Moses’ order here is harsher than that general rule, and the difference is bound to Peor, not to warfare in general. The Talmud’s claim of a miraculous test for the women (Yevamot 60b) is legend.

Deuteronomy 21:10–14 later sets conditions for a man who marries a woman taken in war: she mourns her parents a full month, and she may not afterwards be sold. Numbers says nothing about what became of these girls, and that law is not a report of this event.

“Your captives” are to be purified too. The law of chapter 19 was given “unto the children of Israel, and unto the stranger that sojourneth among them” (19:10), and here it reaches Midianite girls on their first days in Israel’s keeping.

The list, raiment, skins, goats’ hair, wood, repeats the kinds of things Leviticus 11:32 says can carry uncleanness: “vessel of wood, or raiment, or skin, or sack”. Tents and clothing of a herding people were made of these very materials.

Eleazar speaks, the first time in Numbers the priest teaches the law in his own voice, as Leviticus 10:10–11 charged Aaron’s house to do. “The ordinance of the law” is chuqqat hattorah, the exact phrase that opens the law of the red heifer in 19:2.

Six metals: gold, silver, brass, iron, tin and lead. “Brass” is nechoshet, copper or bronze; true brass came later. Ezekiel 22:18–20 names nearly the same metals thrown into a furnace. This is the only list of all six in the Torah.

Fire purges what can bear it, and water what cannot, and the water of separation is still required. Later Jewish law built its rules for cleansing vessels acquired from gentiles on this verse (Avodah Zarah 75b): scalding for what is used in hot water, fire for what is used over flame.

The seventh day washing matches 19:19. “Ye shall be clean, and afterward ye shall come into the camp” is the order Miriam kept in 12:14–15: shut out seven days, then brought in. Cleanness comes first and return second.

Three voices give instruction in this chapter: the LORD in verses 1 and 25, Moses in verses 3 and 15, Eleazar in verse 21. After Moses’ own orders and the priest’s ruling, the division of the spoil goes back to the first of these.

“Take the sum” is the census phrase of 1:2 and 26:2, se’u et rosh, “lift the head”. A chapter after counting Israel, Moses counts the plunder with the same words, and with the same partners, Eleazar and the heads of the fathers.

David made the same rule after the raid on Ziklag: “as his part is that goeth down to the battle, so shall his part be that tarrieth by the stuff” (1 Samuel 30:24), and it became “a statute and an ordinance for Israel”. “Took the war upon them” is literally “grasped the war”.

“Tribute” is mekhes, a tax, a word found in the Hebrew Bible only in this chapter. The animals are counted as nefesh, “souls”, “one soul of five hundred”, the same word that covers the persons, so the tally uses one unit for every living thing.

“Heave offering” is terumah, “that which is lifted off” a larger whole and set apart. The soldiers pay the priest’s share out of their own half; the congregation is not taxed for what the fighting men have gained.

The Levites receive one in fifty and the priest one in five hundred, ten times less. It is the same ratio as the tithes of 18:26, where the Levites receive Israel’s tenth and give a tenth of it to the priests. The spoil follows the pattern the tithes already set.

Moses and Eleazar act together, as they took the census together in 26:3. The pair who count and divide the spoil here anticipate Eleazar and Joshua, named in 34:17 to divide the land.

“The rest of the prey” is what was left after each soldier had kept his own plunder (verse 53). Even so, six hundred and seventy five thousand sheep is more sheep than Israel had fighting men.

“Beeves” is the old plural of beef, which in 1611 meant the living ox or cow, not its meat. Seventy two thousand head of cattle is an enormous herd for a campaign fought by twelve thousand men.

Sixty one thousand asses, the pack animals of herdsmen and traders. No camels are listed, though Midian’s camels are “without number” in Judges 6:5. Either these clans kept few, or camels were counted somewhere the text does not show.

“Persons” is nefesh adam, “souls of man”. The word nefesh has just been used for the animals of the tribute; adding adam, human, is the only thing that separates these entries from the beasts in the list.

Three hundred and thirty seven thousand five hundred sheep for twelve thousand soldiers is about twenty eight sheep a man. The same number spread over the rest of the congregation comes to roughly half a sheep each.

Six hundred and seventy five is the total of verse 32 divided by a thousand, since the tribute is a five hundredth of a half. The figure for the LORD mirrors the whole flock in miniature.

Seventy two oxen go to Eleazar. The heave offerings belonged to the priest’s household “by an ordinance for ever” (18:8), so this is a herd for the priestly family, not a sacrifice for the altar.

Sixty one asses for the priest. An ass could not be offered; its firstling had to be redeemed with a lamb (Exodus 13:13). This part of the tribute could only be put to use, which confirms that terumah here means a gift set apart, not an altar offering.

Thirty two persons go to Eleazar’s house. Leviticus 22:11 allows a servant bought by a priest to eat of the holy things, the nearest the Torah comes to describing such a household. The text says no more of them.

Spoil handed to a priest recalls Abram giving “tithes of all” to Melchizedek after the defeat of the kings (Genesis 14:20). Here the portion is set by rule, not by the victor’s choice, and it passes through Moses’ hands, not the soldiers’.

The sentence breaks off. “Of the children of Israel’s half” begins a clause that verses 43–46 interrupt with a parenthesis of figures, and it resumes in verse 47 with the same words, “Even of the children of Israel’s half”.

The congregation’s half is written out in full, three hundred and thirty seven thousand five hundred, digit for digit the soldiers’ figure, where a single “likewise” would have done. The record prefers to be checkable over being short.

Thirty six thousand oxen, of which the Levites’ fiftieth comes to seven hundred and twenty, ten times the priest’s seventy two. None of the Levite figures is stated; the reader must divide.

The King James keeps the Hebrew’s odd order, “thirty thousand asses and five hundred”, with the animal between the two parts of the number. The Levites’ share of these would have been six hundred and ten.

Three hundred and twenty persons go to the Levites. The other time foreigners are assigned to sanctuary service is the Gibeonites, made “hewers of wood and drawers of water” for the house of God in Joshua 9:27.

The closing parenthesis ends and the sentence of verse 42 is completed, with “as the LORD commanded Moses” for the fourth time in the chapter. The command of verses 25–30 has now been carried out to the letter.

The captains of thousands and of hundreds are the same ranks Moses was “wroth with” in verse 14. They “came near”, the verb of approaching the sanctuary, and this time they bring something.

“Lacketh not” is the verb paqad, which means to count and also to be missing from a count. The officers’ census uses the census verb to say that the census came out whole: no one is missing from the number.

The items match the gifts for the tabernacle in Exodus 35:22: “bracelets, and earrings, and rings, and tablets, all jewels of gold”. “Tablets” is kumaz, of uncertain meaning, perhaps a pendant or a string of gold beads. “Chains” are armlets, like the one taken from Saul’s arm in 2 Samuel 1:10.

“Wrought jewels” is kli ma’aseh, finished work. The gold comes as ornaments, not melted bars. Generations later Gideon asks the same kind of gold of Israel, Midianite earrings, and makes an ephod of it (Judges 8:24–27).

Sixteen thousand seven hundred and fifty shekels is about a hundred and ninety kilograms if the shekel is reckoned at around eleven and a half grams. Gideon’s Midianite earrings in Judges 8:26 weigh a tenth of this, seventeen hundred shekels.

The ordinary soldiers kept their plunder. At Jericho, the next war, everything will be devoted and taking even a garment is death (Joshua 6:18–19; 7:21–25). What Achan does there was lawful here.

Exodus 30:16 uses the same words for the census money: “a memorial unto the children of Israel before the LORD, to make an atonement for your souls”. After a count of men, atonement money is brought, and the officers have followed that pattern exactly.