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.