17 July 2010

Numbers 31
It’s interesting to think that Moses only sent about 2.5% of the men to battle that were available from Israel to destroy all the Midianites. It’s also interesting to see that they killed Balaam who prophesied their destiny from the Lord but who, despite his knowledge tried to be as close to the world and it’s honors as he could. The armies left the women and children alive but Moses commanded them to kill all males and any woman who was not a virgin (which was probably few among the midianites considering that the reason they were being destroyed was because they had led Israel to commit whoredoms with their women).

Half the spoil was given to those men who had gone to war and the other half was split among the rest of the people. From those who had gone to war 0.2% of the spoil was given to the high priest for a heave offering. From the rest of the people 2% of the spoil was given to the Levites for their support. The 12,000 men who had gone to war had 16,000 women among them from the spoil. I wonder how many became wives or concubines and how many were simply servants. Not one of the Israelite warriors was killed in the war and they thanked the Lord by freely offering of their spoils unto the Lord besides the 0.2% that was required.


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