Tuesday, March 17

The Slaughter of the Midianites - Numbers 31

The Bible is quite violent. Any one reading a-Bible-through-a-year plan knows this, thus the blog posts have been a bit intense lately. Yesterday I read about the slaughter of the Midianites, in Numbers 31, where during Israel's conquest into their inheritance--the Promised Land--God directed them to kill every male, every male child, and every woman who was not a virgin of the people of Midian. This, according to Holy Scripture, was a war of the execution of "the Lord's vengeance on Midian" (31:3). God through Israel was judging the nations, specifically, the nation of Midian.

Why? Well, one of the reasons God gives, is because of the sin of Peor where the Israelites "play[ed] the harlot with the daughters of Moab" because "they invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods" (Numbers 25:1-2). This made God angry, because God hates idolatry. He hates that which is elevated above Himself, and He hates it when His people bow down to false gods. Israel, in fact, spared the women, but God would have none of it, and would only spare the "girls who have not known man intimately" (31:18).

Let's be honest, to put it mildly, seems a bit drastic doesn't it? Yes, it is drastic. It is severe. It is extreme. It is so, because God is holy and He is just.

Why did God do this and yet spare so many other evil nations throughout history? I do not know; but it is a lesson, and not just a metaphor, because this really happened--sword and screams--and all that goes with it, but I know from this story, from this happening, that God is holy, righteous, and an avenger of His own Name.

Christopher Wright tells us how to read this difficult story:

"I have to read the conquest in the light of the cross...when I do set it in the light of the cross, I see one more perspective. For the cross too involved the most horrific and evil human violence, which, at the same time, also constitututed the outpouring of God's judgment on human sin. The crucial difference, of course, is that, whereas at the conquest, God poured out his judgment on a wicked society who deserved it, at the cross God bore on himself the judgment of God on human wickedness, through the person of his own sinless Son--who deserved it not one bit." The God I Do Not Understand, 107.
Maybe one of the reasons why you and I turn away from the slaughter of Midian and mostly choose to ignore these types of passages is because we are the Midianites. We are the idolatres. We too deserve God's judgment.

Maybe we ignore these kind of stories, because our view of the cross is too small. We see the cross-event as a nice picture of God's love and forget that it is the culminating point of God's great wrath and His triumphing love. Sin is judged at the cross and it is judged in horrifying violence upon one perfectly innocent. We are stunned at the fact that God wouldn't spare the idolatrous Midianite women, but the cross should stun us more--God would not spare His own innocent Son, but instead gave Him up. The Midianites weren't innocent. Jesus was and is, yet the son of God died a violent and Godforsaken death, in the place of sinnners so sinners would never face the judgment of God.

Read the slaughter of Midian in light of the slaughter of the son of God.

10 comments:

Anonymous March 17, 2009 at 10:58 AM  

Thanks BJ, that is a great explanation, and something I have also been thinking about lately. The wrath of God. It has been literally left out of most theology I ever hear, but it is most definitely in the Word of God, and even more dominate than love. Understanding the wrath of God, toward me the sinner, puts more value on what Christ truly did on the cross. Christ was the propitiation for us on the cross, taking upon himself the wrath of God, that we not be under it as we deserve(1 John 4:10). We deserve what happened to the Midianites, 100%. I am only beginning to grasp this, but it is changing my view of Jesus forever. Thanks for bringing this doctrine forward, our "christian" culture is desperate for it.

BJ Stockman March 18, 2009 at 8:29 AM  

Thanks for the comment, friend.

As well, I too grasp it very little.

Thank God for his holy love in sending His Son to die for sinners.

Unknown August 19, 2009 at 4:32 PM  

If god is so petty that he would order genocide and rape of an entire tribe because another god was receiving attention, then he is not a god of love and definitely not worth worshiping if he happens to exist.

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