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Num_31:19 And do ye abide without the camp seven days: whosoever hath killed any person, and whosoever hath touched any slain, purify [both] yourselves and your captives on the third day, and on the seventh day.
Ver. 19. Whosoever hath killed any person.] War, though never so just, is the slaughter house of mankind, and the hell of this world. Homer brings in Mars, the god of battle, as most hated of Jupiter. Bellum per antlphrasin, quia minime bellum. "For every battle of the warrior is with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood." {Isa_9:5} What a strange man then was Pyrrhus, King of the Epirotes, of whom Justin reports, that he took more pleasure in fighting than in reigning! And what a hard heart had Hannibal, who, when he saw a pit full of man’s blood which he had spilt, cried out, O formosum spectaculum! O brave sight! So, O rem regiam, said Valesus, i.e., O kingly act! when he had slain three hundred persons. And what a strange hell-hag was that queen, who, when she saw some of her Protestant subjects lying dead and stripped upon the earth, cried out, The goodliest tapestry that ever she beheld! God, that he might teach his people not to have "feet swift to shed blood," tells them here of a ceremonial uncleanness, contracted by killing, though an enemy, devoted by him to destruction.