Numbers31chapter 31

Numbers 31:1-4

God says avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites, and Moses passing the order on says avenge the Lord of Midian. The text sets the two objects side by side and explains neither. The same sentence ties the errand to the end of Moses, afterward shalt thou be gathered unto thy people, which repeats what was already said to him at 27:13. The levy is a thousand from every tribe alike, though the census five chapters back had run from twenty two thousand two hundred in Simeon to seventy six thousand five hundred in Judah.

Numbers 31:5-12

Twelve thousand men go out, and Phinehas goes with them carrying the holy instruments and the trumpets, which Numbers 10:9 had appointed for war so that Israel would be remembered before the Lord. Phinehas is the man who stopped the plague at Peor in chapter 25, and Balaam falls in this battle among the five kings of Midian. Joshua 13:21-22 lists the same five as princes of Midian who were dukes of Sihon, and names Balaam the soothsayer slain with the sword among them. The narrative had last left him at 24:25, rising up and returning to his place.

Numbers 31:13-16

The army is met outside the camp with the women of Midian alive among the captives, and Moses is angry with the officers. Verse 16 supplies what chapters 22 to 24 never said, that these women acted through the counsel of Balaam in the matter of Peor. Chapter 25 had told the seduction without naming its author, and the New Testament follows this verse rather than the narrative at 2 Peter 2:15, Jude 11 and Revelation 2:14, where Balaam is the man who taught Balac to cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel.

Numbers 31:17-18

The order is given in plain words, and the ground the chapter offers is the verse before it, the matter of Peor and the plague that followed. Barnes reads the campaign as a sentence carried out on a national sin rather than an ordinary war, because the rulers of Midian took the counsel and their people acted on it. Clarke writes on this verse that the author of life may dispose of it, and he holds out mercy for the souls of those killed. The girls kept alive are read by Gill as taken into Israelite households, and Deuteronomy 21:10-14 gives the law that governs a captive woman taken to wife.

Numbers 31:19-25

Winning the battle exempts no one from the law of the dead. Every man who killed or touched a body waits outside seven days and is purified on the third day and the seventh with the water of separation, which is the red heifer ordinance of chapter 19 put to work. Eleazar rather than Moses states the law here, and he adds a rule chapter 19 did not give, that metal able to bear fire goes through fire and what cannot bear it goes through water. The captives are purified along with the soldiers.

Numbers 31:26-31

The prey is halved between the men who fought and the congregation that stayed behind, and David later makes that principle a statute at 1 Samuel 30:24-25, that the man who tarries by the stuff parts alike with the man who goes down to the battle. The two halves are then taxed at different rates. The soldiers give one of every five hundred to Eleazar and the congregation gives one of every fifty to the Levites, so the levy on those who stayed is ten times the levy on those who went.

Numbers 31:32-40

The totals come to six hundred and seventy five thousand sheep, seventy two thousand beeves, sixty one thousand asses and thirty two thousand women, and the chapter halves each figure and works the tribute at one in five hundred. The sums balance to the last head, six hundred and seventy five sheep out of three hundred and thirty seven thousand five hundred, and seventy two beeves out of thirty six thousand. Clarke stops at the tribute of persons to reject an old reading that the thirty two women were offered in sacrifice, and takes them as given to service at the sanctuary. Verse 32 calls the booty the rest of the prey, which leaves room for what verse 53 says the men kept.

Numbers 31:41-47

Moses hands the tribute from the men of war to Eleazar, and the congregation's half is then written out again inside a parenthesis, the same sheep and beeves and asses and persons a second time. Its levy of one in fifty goes to the Levites who kept the charge of the tabernacle, which rests on the arrangement of Numbers 18:21-24, where the Levites hold no inheritance and live on what Israel brings in. The phrase as the Lord commanded Moses falls four times in this chapter, at verses 7, 31, 41 and 47, and half of those fall in the accounting of the spoil.

Numbers 31:48-50

The officers come to Moses without being sent for, having taken the sum of their men, and they report that there lacketh not one man of us. Barnes observes that the chapter records no resistance from Midian at all, and the officers read that outcome as the reason for the gift they bring. What they call the gift is an atonement for our souls, which is the language of Exodus 30:12, where taking the sum of Israel required a ransom for every man numbered so that there be no plague among them. That camp had buried twenty four thousand in the plague of 25:9.

Numbers 31:51-54

The gold weighs sixteen thousand seven hundred and fifty shekels, brought by the captains of thousands and of hundreds. Verse 53 adds in a parenthesis that the men of war had taken spoil every man for himself, and readers divide over it, with Barnes taking it that the common soldiers made no offering and Gill taking it that every man contributed out of what he had kept. The gold is carried into the tabernacle for a memorial for the children of Israel before the Lord, which is the use Exodus 30:16 gave for the atonement money of a people numbered.