WAR AND SETTLEMENT
1. THE WAR WITH MIDIAN
Numbers 31
THE command to vex and smite the Midianites {Num 25:16-17} has
already been considered. Israel had not the spiritual power which
would have justified any attempt to convert that people. Degrading
idolatry was to be held in abhorrence, and those who clung to it
suppressed. Now the time comes for an exterminating war. While
hordes of Bedawin occupy the hills and the neighbouring desert,
there can be no security either for morals, property, or life.
Balaam is among them plotting against Israel: and his restless
energy, we may suppose, precipitates the conflict. Moses conveys the
command of God that the attack on Midian shall be immediately made,
and himself directs the campaign.
The details of the enterprise are given somewhat fully. A thousand
fighting men are called from each tribe. The religious purpose of
the war is signified by the presence in the host of Phinehas, whose
zeal has given him a name among the warriors. He is allowed to carry
with him the "vessels of the sanctuary"; and the silver trumpets are
to be sounded on the march and in the attack. The Midianitish clan
apparently gives way at once before the Hebrews, and either makes no
stand or is totally defeated in a single battle. All the men are put
to the sword, including Balaam and five chiefs, whose names are
preserved. The women and children are taken; the whole of the cattle
and goods becomes the prey of the victors; the cities and
encampments are burned with fire. On the return of the army with the
large band of captives, Moses is greatly displeased. He demands of
the officers why the women have been spared, -the very women who
caused the children of Israel to trespass against the Lord. Then he
orders all above a certain age, and the male children, to be put to
death. The young girls alone are to be kept alive.
The purification of those who have been engaged in the war is next
commanded. For seven days the army must remain outside the camp.
Those who have touched any dead body and all the captives are to be
ceremonially cleansed on the third and seventh days. Every article
of raiment, everything made of skins and goats’ hair, and all
woollen articles, are to be purified by means of the water of
expiation. Whatever is made of metal is to be passed through the
fire.
Details of the quantity and division of the prey, and the voluntary
oblations made as an "atonement for their souls" by the officers and
soldiers out of their booty, occupy the rest of the chapter. The
numbers of oxen, sheep, and asses are great-six hundred and
seventy-five thousand sheep, seventy-two thousand beeves, sixty-one
thousand asses. No mention is made of horses or camels. The girls
saved alive are thirty-two thousand. The army takes one half, and
those who remained in the camp receive the other. But of the
soldiers’ portion, one in five hundred both of the persons and of
the animals is given to the priests, and of the people’s portion one
in fifty to the Levites. The jewels of gold, ankle-chains,
bracelets, signet-rings, earrings and armlets offered by the men of
war as their "atonement," not one of them having fallen in the
battle, amount in weight to sixteen thousand seven hundred and fifty
shekels, the value of which may be estimated at some thirty thousand
of our pounds. The gold is brought into the tent of meeting for a
memorial before the Lord.
Now here we have to deal with an accumulation of statements, every
one of which raises some question or other. The war of national and
moral antipathy is itself easily understood. But the slaughter of so
many in battle and so many others in cold blood, the statement that
not a single Israelite fell. the number and kinds of the animals
captured, the order given by Moses to put all the women to death,
the quantity of gold taken, of which the offering appears only to
have been a part-all of these points have been criticised in a more
or less incredulous spirit. In apology it has been said, with regard
to the slaughter of the women, that when brought as captives by the
soldiers they could not be received into the camp, and there was
only this way of dealing with them, unless indeed they had been sent
back to their ruined encampments, where they would have slowly died.
Again, it has been explained that the Midianites were so debased and
enfeebled as to have no power to, withstand the onset of the
Hebrews. The droves of oxen, sheep, and asses are held to be not
greater than a wealthy nomadic clan, numbering perhaps two hundred
thousand, would be likely to own; and the quantity of gold is
likewise accounted for by the well-known fact that among Orientals
the wealth represented by precious metals is fashioned into
ornaments for the women.
In detail the difficulties may thus be partly overcome; yet the
whole account remains so singular, both in its spirit and incidents,
that Wellhausen has roundly declared it to be fictitious, and others
have had no resource but to fall back, even for the slaughter of the
women, on the Divine command. It is true there were other peoples,
the Moabites, for instance, as idolatrous, and almost as degraded.
But a terror of Jehovah’s name had to be created for the moral good
of the whole region, and the Midianites, it is said, who had so
grossly assailed the purity of Israel, were fitly selected for
Divine chastisement. The opinion that the whole account is an
invention of the "Priests’ Code" may be at once dismissed. The ideas
of national purity that prevailed after the exile and are insisted
upon in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah would not have countenanced
the dedication of any spared from the slaughter, even young girls,
as a tribute to Jehovah. The attack and the issue of it were, no
doubt, recorded in the ancient documents of which the compilers of
the Book of Numbers made use. And the fact must be held to stand,
that there was a grim slaughter relentlessly carried out at the
command of Moses in accordance with the moral and theocratic ideas
that ruled his mind.
But it remains doubtful whether the numbers can be trusted, even
although they appear to be in the substance of the narrative. The
disproportion is enormous between the twelve thousand Israelites
sent against Midian and the number of men who, if we accept the
figures given, must have fallen without ‘striking one effective blow
for their lives. Of these there would have been some forty thousand
at least. Assuming that somehow the numbers are exaggerated, we find
the story a good deal cleared. It was entirely in harmony with the
spirit of the age that a war an outrance should have been commanded
in the circumstances. If, then, an adequate force of Hebrews marched
against the Midianites and took them at unawares, perhaps by night,
or when they were engaged in some idolatrous orgy, their defeat and
slaughter would be comparatively easy. The Hebrews with Phinehas
among them were, we may believe, filled with patriotic and religious
ardour, assured that they were commissioned to execute Divine
justice and must not shrink from any work that lay in their way,
however dreadful. Does the thing they did still seem incredible?
Perhaps the recollection of what took place after the Indian Mutiny,
when Great Britain was in the same temper, may throw light upon the
question. The soldiers then, bent on punishing the cruelty and lust
of the rebels, partly in patriotism, partly in revenge, set mercy
altogether aside. If we had the whole history of the war with Midiah,
instead of the mere outlines preserved in Numbers, we might find
that, apart from figures, the statements are by no means over-coloured.
Moses had the entire responsibility of ordering the women to be put
to death. When he saw the train of female captives, some of them
possibly using their arts of blandishment not without success, he
might well be afraid that the very end for which the war had been
undertaken was to be frustrated. He was a man who did not scruple to
shed blood when the law of God and the purity of morals and religion
seemed to be endangered. He knew Jehovah to be gracious-gracious to
those who loved Him and kept His commandments. But was He not also a
jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children
unto the third and fourth generations of them that hated Him? It was
this God Moses sought to serve when in the heat of his indignation,
and not without reason, he gave the terrible order.
The appropriation of some of the captive girls to the priests and
Levites as "Jehovah’s tribute," the offering by the soldiers of part
of their booty as an "atonement" for their souls, the presence of
Phinehas with the "vessels of the sanctuary," and the sacred
trumpets in the ranks-these manifestly belong to the time to which
the history refers. And it may be said in closing that circumstances
might be well known to Moses on account of which the attack had to
be made promptly and the dispersion of the Midianites had to be
complete. We cannot tell what Balaam may have been plotting; but we
may be pretty sure there was nothing too base for him to scheme and
the Midianites to carry into effect. They knew themselves to be
under suspicion, perhaps in danger. With what craft and vehemence
the Bedawin can act we are well aware. Life even yet is of no
account among them. Another day, perhaps, and the ark might have
been carried off or Moses put to death in his tent. But the nature
of the wrong done to Israel is a sufficient explanation of the war.
And we can also see that the Hebrews themselves had a lesson in
moral severity when their soldiers went forth to the massacre and
returned red with blood. They learned that the sin of Midian was
abominable in the sight of God and should be abominable in theirs.
They were taught, whether they received the teaching or not, that
they were to be enemies for ever of those who practised idolatry so
vile. A deep gulf was made between them and all who sympathised with
the worship and customs of the tribe they destroyed.
And the whole circumstances, remote as they are from our own time,
may bring home even to Christians the duty of moral decision and
relentless war against the vices and lusts with which too many are
inclined to make terms. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but
against the "wiles of error," the "lusts of deceit," against "ornication,
uncleanness, lasciviousness, enmities, strife, jealousies, wraths,
factions, divisions, heresies, envyings, drunkenness, revellings and
such like,"-the works of the flesh. These Midianites are with us,
would draw our hearts away from religion and destroy our souls. Not
only are we to assail the grosser forms of sin and exterminate them,
but we are with equal severity to strike down the fair-seeming vices
that come with blandishment and insidious appeal. This is our holy
war. The old form of it required the suppression or extermination of
those identified with vice, men and women, all in whom the impurity
was rooted. Young girls alone could be spared, whose character might
still be shaped by a higher morality. Even yet, to a certain extent,
that way of dealing with evil has to be followed. We imprison felons
and put murderers to death; but the new power that has come with
Christianity enables us to deal with many transgressors as capable
of reformation and a new life. And this power is far as yet from
being fully developed.
It is the fault of our age to be on one side too lenient, on another
wanting in patience, charity, and hope. Excuses are found for sin on
the ground that it is useless to fight against nature that we must
not be hypocritical nor puritanical. Temptations that come with
mincing gait, cajolery, and smiles, are allowed to disport
themselves untouched. Why, it is asked, should life be made sombre?
A stern religion that would banish gaiety is declared to be no
friend of the race. Under cover of art-pictorial, dramatic, literary
- the customs of Midian are not only admitted but allowed to have
authority. And religion even is invoked. Are not all things pure to
the pure? Should not life be as free and joyous as the Maker clearly
intends in giving us the capacity for those gratifications to which
art of every kind ministers? Is not full freedom indispensable to
the highest religion? Ought not genius, in every department, to have
complete liberty in guiding and developing the race?
Without hypocrisy, without banishing the sunshine of life or denying
the freedom which is necessary to progress and vigour, we are to be
jealous for morality, severe against all that threatens it. And here
our age is impatient of direction. The tendency is to a civilisation
without morality, that is, a new barbarism. The strenuous mind of
the old theocratic leaders is required anew, with a difference. Life
and thought have so far advanced under Christianity that liberty is
good in things which once had to be sternly reprobated; but only the
same guidance will carry us higher. To those who lead in arts and
literature the appeal has to be made in the name of God and men to
regard the fitness of things The old ideas of Puritanism are not to
be the standard? True. Neither are the tastes of Greece nor the
manners of Pompeii. Every artist must, it appears, be his own
censor. Let each, then, use his right under a sense of
responsibility to the God who would have all to be pure and free.
There are pictures exhibited, and poems sent out from the press, and
novels published, which, for all the skill and charm that are in
them, ought to have been cast into the fire. In private life, too,
the Midianitish talk, the jest, the anecdote, the innuendo, all but
indecent, the hint, the laugh that breaks down the barriers of
integrity and sobriety, show the license of a barbarism which is
bent on conquest. Every Christian is called to wage against these
immoralities an exterminating war.
On the other hand, charity and patience are needed. It is difficult
to forbear with those who seem to find their pleasure in what is
evil, more difficult to continue the efforts necessary to win them
to religion, purity, and honour. We feel it a hard task to track our
own unholy desires to their retreats and slay them there.
Proteus-like they elude us; when we think they have been destroyed,
a passing word or thought revives them. And if in the task of our
own purification we need long patience, it is not wonderful that
even more should be required in the attempt to set others free from
their besetting sins. Much of our philanthropy, again, is useless
because we try to cover too large a field. Few are engaged in
comparison with the enormous region over which effort has to extend,
and we treat the hurt slightly, with too much haste. Then we grow
despondent. Impatience, hopelessness, should never be known among
those who undertake the Divine work of saving men and women from
their sins. But to cure this, new ideas on the whole subject of
Christian endeavour and new methods of work are required. The evil
forces, a host arrayed against true life, must be followed into the
desert places where they lurk, and there, with the sword of the
Spirit, which is the bright strong word of God, attacked and slain.
When Christians are brave and loving enough, when they have patience
enough, the gospel of purity will begin to have its power.
2. SETTLEMENT
Numbers 32
The request of the men of Reuben and Gad that they should be
allowed to settle on the eastern side of Jordan in the land of Jazer
and the land of Gilead was at first refused by Moses with warm
displeasure. They appeared to wish exemption from further military
duty, if indeed they had not almost formed the intention of parting
altogether with the rest of the tribes. Moses asked of them, "Shall
your brethren go to the war and shall ye sit here? And wherefore
discourage ye the heart of the children of Israel from going over
into the land which the Lord hath given them?" He recalled the spies
and the evil report they brought, by which a former generation had
been disheartened and made to murmur against the Lord.
The forty years of wandering had intervened since that error-a long
period of suffering and punishment. And now with this request the
men of Reuben and Gad were playing the same dangerous part. "Behold,
ye are risen up in your fathers’ stead, an increase of sinful men,
to augment yet the fierce anger of the Lord toward Israel."
It is somewhat surprising to find the proposal met in this way. But
Moses had doubtless good cause for his condemnation of the two
tribes. For some time, we can believe, the notion had been
entertained, and already the cattle were driven northwards and
scattered over the pastures of Gilead. The people felt that the
confraternity which had survived the test of the wilderness journey
was now about to break up. And as the two clans that proposed to
settle in Eastern Palestine were strong and could send a large
number of warriors into the field, there was reason to fear that the
want of them would make the conquest of the great tribes beyond
Jordan too heavy a task.
The circumstances were of a kind resembling those of a Church when
the enjoyment of privilege and of the gains of the past is chosen by
many of its members, and the rest, discouraged by this moral
unbrotherliness, have to maintain the aggressive work which ought to
be shared by all. The force of unity lost, the Christian energy of
large numbers lying unemployed, the rest overburdened, Churches
often come far short of the success they might attain. When
Reubenites and Gadites devote themselves to building houses,
cultivating fields, and rearing cattle, neglecting altogether the
command of God to conquer the territory still in the hands of His
enemies, the spirit of religion cannot but decay. The selfishness of
worldly Christians reacts on those who are not worldly, so that they
feel its subtle influence, even although they scorn to yield. And
when there is some great task to be done which requires the personal
service and contributions of all, withdrawal of the less zealous may
in this way make victory impossible. True, we have on the other side
the case of Gideon and his rejection of the great bulk of his army,
that he might take the field with a few who were brave and ready.
Numbers of halfhearted people do not help an enterprise. Still, the
duties of the Church of Christ are so great that all are required
for them. It is no apology to say that men are apathetic, and
therefore useless. They ought to be eager for the Divine war.
It was not at all wonderful that the men of Reuben and Gad proposed
to settle on the east of Jordan. The soil of that region, extending
from the Jabbok Valley northwards, and including the whole district
watered by the Yarmuk and its tributaries, was exceedingly fertile,
with fine forests of oak, and stretches of meadow and arable land.
What could be seen of Judaea from the heights of Moab appeared poor
and barren in comparison with that green and fertile country. There
was abundance of room there, not only for the two tribes, but for
more; and besides the half of Manasseh which finally joined Reuben
and Gad, other clans may have begun to think that they might rest
content without venturing across Jordan. But Moses had good reasons
for resisting as far as possible this desire. There was no natural
boundary on the east of Gilead and Bashan. Moab, in a similar
situation, was exposed to the attacks and perhaps corrupted by the
influence of the Midianites. If Israel had taken up its abode in
this region which joined on to the desert, it too would have become
half a desert people. The Jordan came, as no doubt Moses foresaw, to
be the real boundary of the nation which maintained the faith of
Jehovah and carried on His purposes.
In danger of losing all because they had been too selfish, the men
of Reuben and Gad made a new proposal. They would go with the rest
to the conquest of Canaan; yea, they would form the van of the army.
If Moses would only allow them to provide sheep-folds for their
flocks and cities for their families, they would take the field and
never think of returning till the other tribes had all found
settlement. The offer was one which Moses saw fit to accept; but
with a caution to the Reubenites. If they fulfilled the promise, he
said, they should be guiltless before the Lord; but if they did not,
their sin would be written against them. Foreseeing the result of a
division between the east and west which any such faithless conduct
would certainly cause, he added the warning, "Be sure your sin will
find you out." The time would come when, if they refused to do their
part in helping the rest, they should find themselves, in some day
of extreme peril, without the sympathy of their brethren, the prey
of enemies who came from the east and north.
Earthly comfort and the means of material prosperity can never be
enjoyed without spiritual disadvantage, or at least the risk of
spiritual loss. The whole region of ease and wealth lies towards the
desert in which the adversaries of the soul have their
lurking-places, from which they come stealthily or even boldly in
open day to make their assaults. A man who has large means is
exposed to the envy of others; his life may be embittered by their
designs upon him; his nature may be seriously injured by the
flattery of those who have no power but only the base cunning to
which narrow self-love may descend. These, however, are not the
assailants that are most to be dreaded. Rather should the man who is
rich fear the danger to his religion and his soul which draws near
in other ways. The wealthy who have no religion court his friendship
and propose to him schemes for increasing his wealth. Alliances are
urged upon him which stir and partly gratify his ambition. He is
pointed to honours that can only be had through abandoning the great
ideas of life by which he should be ruled. He is served
obsequiously, and is tempted to think that the world goes very well
because he enjoys all he desires, or is in the way to obtain the
fulfilment of his highest earthly hopes. The curse of egotism hangs
over him, and to escape it he needs a double portion of the spirit
of humility. Yet how is that to come to him?
It is well for a man when, before enjoying the good things of this
life in abundance, he has taken the field with those who have to
fight a hard battle, and has done his share of common work. But even
that is not enough to guard him against pride and self-sufficiency
for the whole term of his existence. Better is it when by his own
choice the hardness is retained in his experience, when he never
discharges himself from the duty of fighting side by side with
others, that he may help them to their inheritance. That and that
alone will save his life. He is called as a soldier of God to
maintain the holy war for human rights, for the social well-being
and spiritual good of mankind. Every rich man should be a friend of
the people, a reformer, taking the part of the multitude against his
own tendency and the tendency of his class to exclusiveness and
self-indulgence. The warning given by Moses to Reuben and Gad in
accepting their proposals should linger with those who are rich and
in high station. If they fail to do their duty to the general mass
of their fellow-men, if they leave the rest to fight, at
disadvantage, for their human inheritance, they sin against God’s
law, which calls for brotherhood, and that sin will surely find them
out. In the end no sin is more sure to come home in judgment. And it
is not by some miserable gifts to religious objects or some
patronage of philanthropic schemes the prosperous can discharge the
great debt laid upon them. In whatever way the inequalities of life,
the disabilities of privilege and wealth, hinder the realisation of
brotherhood, there lie opportunity and need for men’s personal
effort. Would this imply sacrifice of what are called rights, of
perhaps no small amount of substance? That is precisely the saving
of a rich man’s life. To that Christ pointed the rich young ruler
who came to Him seeking salvation-from that the inquirer turned
away.
And how does the sin of those who neglect such high duties find them
out? Perhaps in the loss of the possessions they have selfishly
guarded, and their reduction to the level of those whom they kept at
arm’s-length and treated as inferiors or as enemies. Perhaps in the
harshness of temper and bitterness of spirit the proud, friendless
rich man may find growing upon him in old age, the horrible feeling
that he has not one brother where he should have had thousands, no
one to care-except selfishly-whether he lives or dies. To come to
that, so far as a man is concerned with his fellow-men, is to be
indeed lost. But these retributions may be artfully escaped. What
then? Is not One to be reckoned with who is the Guardian of the
human family and gives men power and wealth only as His stewards, to
be used in His service? The future life does not obliterate society,
but it destroys the class separations, the factitious distinctions,
that exist now. It brings a man face to face with the fact that he
is but a man, like others, responsible to God. Is not the result
indicated by our Lord when He says to exclusive Pharisaical men,
"They shall come from the east and west, and from the north and
south, and shall sit down in the kingdom-ye yourselves cast forth
without"? Brotherhood here, not in name, but in deed and truth,
means brotherhood above. Denial of it here means unfitness for the
society of heaven.
We learn from Num 32:19 that the Reubenites and Gadites confidently
affirmed, even when they made their request to Moses, that their
inheritance had fallen to them on the east side of Jordan. It may be
asked how they knew, since the division was not yet made. And the
answer appears to be that they had made up their minds on the
subject. Without waiting for the lot, they seem to have said, This
is nobody’s land now that the Amorites and Midianites are
dispossessed. We will have it. And there was no sufficient reason
for refusing them their choice when they accepted the conditions. At
the same time, these tribes did not act fairly and honourably. And
the result was that, although they gained the fat land and the good
pastures, they lost the close fellowship with the other tribes which
was of greater value. Reuben, the premier tribe, could no longer
keep its position. It was by-and-by succeeded by Judah. Neither
Reuben nor Gad made any great figure in the subsequent history. The
half-tribe of Manasseh, which was settled, not on its own request,
but by authority, in the northern part of Gilead towards the Argob,
had greater distinction. Gad has some notice. We read of eleven
valiant men of this tribe who swam the Jordan at its highest to join
David in his trouble. "But no person, no incident is recorded to
place Reuben before us in any distincter form than as a member of
the community (if community it can be called) of the Reubenites, the
Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh. The very towns of his
inheritance-Heshbon, Aroer, Kiriathaim, Dibon, Baal-meon, Sibmah,
Jazer-are familiar to us as Moabite, not as Israelite, towns." The
Reubenites, in fact, under the influence of their wild neighbors,
gradually lost touch with their brethren and fell away from the
religion of Jehovah.
It is a parable of the degeneration of life.-Earthly choice rules
and heavenly faith is hazarded for the sake of a temporal advantage.
Men have their will because they insist upon it. They do not consult
the prophet, but make terms with him, that they may gain their end.
But as they place themselves, so they have to live, not on the soil
of the promised land, no integral part of Israel.
|