YOU LET THE WOMEN LIVE?

“Moshe, El’azar the cohen and all the community leaders went to meet them outside the camp. But Moshe was angry with the army officers, the commanders of thousands and the commanders of hundreds coming in from the battlefield. Moshe asked them, ‘You let the women live?’”
Numbers 31:13-15

Perhaps a little background is needed here. Remember not long ago we read the account of Pinchas and how with a spear in the stomach of the Hebrew man and Midyan woman, the camp was saved. It is in Numbers 31 that Adonai said to Moshe that the army of Isra’el was to take vengeance on this people. With this direction, Moshe sent the army out and they killed the kings of Midyan, as well as Bil’am the son of B’or. However, just as King Saul did in his time with the Amaleki by reserving life for the ones he chose despite what Adonai had ordered, so the people of Isra’el did here. When Moshe went to meet up with the army, he found the women and children spared. The command of Adonai was to kill all, not to spare. This disobedience angered Moshe and he questioned, “You let the women live? Why, these are the ones who – because of Bil’am’s advice – caused the people of Isra’el to rebel, breaking faith with Adonai in the P’or incident, so that the plague broke out among Adonai’s community.”
The account continues, but I must stop because I feel so strongly the point that is being made in this account. It is the same holy vengeance that rises in me when I read of Saul in I Samuel 15. Adonai expects to be obeyed. He doesn’t counsel us just because, but because there is purpose. He directs us so that sin is kept from our camp. But in letting these women and children survive, Isra’el was giving themselves the chance to be swayed again. These people, these Midyan’s, did not worship Adonai. They worshiped foreign gods, and they swayed the men of before in disrespecting Adonai along with them and serving idols.
This anger rises in me as I read this account because I know of too many who have done the same. Adonai has commanded they split from this evil, yet they stay connected, they keep a portion back, and they leave the door open. Brothers and sisters, let us be obedient to kill what Adonai tells us to kill, to close the door that Adonai commands us to close. If we fail, we leave ourselves open to another plague.

Numbers 31:13-54