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Numbers 25; Numbers 31
The policy followed was but too successful. As the Hebrews lay encamped in the plains of Moab, unsuspicious of the bad feeling of the Moabites and Midianites towards them, an intercourse gradually, and seemingly in due course, sprang up between the kindred nations. The daughters of Moab and Midian came to visit the women of Israel, and thus fell under the notice of the men. The men of Israel, also, new to a peopled country, and strange to a friendly intercourse with strangers, amused themselves and gratified their curiosity, by visiting the town and villages in the vicinity. This intercourse was perilous for them. Dazzled and bewildered by magnificent and seductive appliances of vice, to which, in their simple wandering life they had been all unused, although their fathers had seen the like things in Egypt, they were prevailed upon by the idolaters of Moab and Midian to take part in the riotous and lustful orgies of their gods. It does not appear to us that they meant to abjure their faith in Jehovah, or so much as adopted a belief in Baal-Peor along with it. What they did was to participate in the licentious acts by which his votaries professed to honor him. “They joined themselves to Baal-Peor”—rather “bound themselves with his badge;” for it was the custom in ancient times, as it is now, in all Pagan countries, for every idol to have some specific badge, or ensign, by which his votaries were known. As before they had by an insubordination which threatened the permanency of the state, so now, by practices which outraged the great principle and object of its institution, they created a necessity for a severe and exemplary visitation of the Divine displeasure. No miracle for this purpose was, however, needed. The corruption was not general, and the faithful were sufficient to enforce the decisions of the. Sovereign Judge against the offenders. The men of rank and authority—“the heads of the people”—who had lent the sanction of their example to this abomination, were ordered to be put to death. The direction “hang them up against the sun,” does not mean that they were put to death by hanging, but that after they had been slain by the sword or by stoning, their bodies should be exposed to public view until sun-down. This being done, Moses gave the word that the different judges dispersed among the tribes, should execute the Lord’s judgment upon all the offenders within their jurisdiction. It is probable they were easily known by their badges. This was done, and there fell on that day, under the sword of justice, no fewer than twenty-four thousand men.
While these things were doing, and while the people were mourning before the tabernacle, an act of high-handed daring, in one of the chiefs of Simeon, in conducting publicly to his tent one of the “fair idolatresses,” by whom all this mischief had been caused, so kindled the zealous wrath and indignation of Phinehas, the son of the high-priest, that he followed them, and transfixed both the man and woman with a javelin, at one stroke. For this he was commended. He but executed the judgment which had been passed on such offenders, and in this case, at such a time, and under such circumstances, the crime was trebly flagrant. He needs no excuse, for he had his commission; but if he did need excuse, God, as Bishop Hall well remarks, sooner “pardoneth the errors of our fervency, than the indifferences of our lukewarmness.”
At a later period, Moses was ordered to wage a war against the Midianites, whose devices had caused this danger and loss to Israel. He accordingly detached a force of twelve thousand men—one thousand from each tribe—who attacked some of the cities of this people, put to death a portion of its male population, and returned with numerous prisoners (women and children) and a large booty in beeves, asses; and sheep.
Among the causes which justify war, none is more unanimously asserted by public writers than an attempt on the part of one community against the political institutions, and so against the integrity and internal peace, of another. The Hebrews had therefore an undoubted right, even apart from the divine command, to attack the people of Midian, who had treacherously endeavored to withdraw them from their allegiance, and thus to remove the principles of all their union, prosperity, and peace; but to prepare them to become an easy conquest for their own arms.
Now, if it be right to wage war at all, it is not only right to wage it in such a manner as shall accomplish its object, but it would be wrong to wage it in any other manner. War is, of its nature, the infliction of suffering in order to an ulterior good; and the infliction of any degree of suffering is unjustifiable, unless so far as it tends to this result. If, therefore, in the prosecution of a war, the measures adopted are of such lenity, as to be insufficient to produce the intended end of protection for the present and security for the future, the mitigated evil becomes then uncompensated by any ulterior good. It is then a causeless and unjustifiable evil; it is not mercy, but cruelty and crime. This principle is clear, and is theoretically acknowledged; yet, when any application of it, however wise and just, tends to severities which we are not accustomed to regard as belonging to the necessities of the case, our feelings are naturally shocked. Yet these principles still operate, and are acknowledged in all our warfare, although, with the progress of civilization, it has come to be understood in civilized communities, that inflictions formerly resorted to shall be forborne. But in their conflicts with barbarous nations, who have no such understanding, they are accustomed to adopt harsher measures; and this, for the simple and sound reason, that the object would not otherwise be gained, and that if they were to allow a war to be to their adversaries a less evil than these adversaries were in the habit of expecting it to prove, such a self-prostrating lenity would tend to a speedy reverse of the contest—for among such nations lenity is ascribed to weakness, and not to the pride of conscious strength. Severity, in short, is beneficent, when it is suited to guard against the necessity of its own repetition; and how much or how little is adequate to that end, is a question to be determined by reference to some existing state of society. The Israelites conducted their warfare on the principles generally recognized in their time; and to have done so on any other or milder principle, against such enemies as they had to contend with, would have been ruinous and suicidal. So only could it be effectual—and war not intended to be effectual should not be waged at all. It is confidently hoped and believed, that the time is coming, is near at hand, when war, as now conducted by ourselves—when any war—will be looked back upon with the same feelings of disgust and horror, as those with which we now regard the warfare of the nations beyond the Mediterranean three and thirty centuries ago.
These remarks are appropriate to the war usages which are about to come under our notice; and they are especially appropriate to the present occasion, as the circumstances of this war with the Midianites have been exposed to much animadversion. It is certain that the Israelites gave no quarter to the men. It was not the custom of the age to do so, except perhaps among the Egyptians, and other civilized nations, which had much use for the labor of slaves. Nevertheless, the words, that “they slow all the males,” does not mean that they exterminated all the men of the nation, as some have thought, but only that they slew all who withstood them—for the nation itself subsisted in considerable strength—and was able in a few generations to bring the Israelites themselves under subjection.
A more difficult point is the command of Moses that the adult females and the male children among the prisoners should be put to death. Pained as we are by the recital of such horrors, and rejoicing that such usages have passed away from the practices of war, a close examination would enable us to see that the principles which have been laid down supply an adequate excuse for a course which Moses himself must have regarded as distressing. His course was designed to act in terrorem, with a view to future security. It is clear that he had no satisfaction in the task. On the contrary, he appears to have been strongly excited when he beheld the array of prisoners, and to have uttered a rebuke, which shows that he would far rather that whatever severity needed to be exercised, should have been finished in the furious haste of onset, than that it should be left, as it was, for his execution in cold blood. As it was, however, the prisoners were upon his hands, and he had to dispose of them as the recent hazards, and the present condition of the state demanded—in an age when the necessities of the world’s government involved the use of a much harsher instrumentality than is now requisite. Taking these considerations with us, it may be asked, What was to be done with these prisoners? Should they be sent home unharmed, or should they be welcomed, on an equal footing, to the hospitality of Israel? Then, if the views already stated are sound, the war ought not to have been undertaken. This follows, even without insisting upon the by no means unessential facts, that in the latter case, the youthful sons of the Midianitish warriors would soon have grown up to be a sword in the bosom of the still feeble state, and possibly to compel the hazards and hardships of another conflict. Then, with respect to the adult females, it is to be considered, that it was their wicked instrumentality which had led Israel to sin, and had given occasion to the recent war; and, on the other hand, the danger from them if allowed to try again their seductive arts upon the Israelites, had just been proved to be such as the infant state could by no means tolerate.
Standing, therefore, in the time and country that Moses did, and amid the circumstances by which he was surrounded, it will be a bold thing for any one to say, that as a man entrusted with the welfare of a nation, he acted wrongly. That he acted only from a strong sense of duty, every one who has studied his character must know—and who among us, in this altered time, is better able than he was, to judge of what his duty exacted? But if in this case he did err, in judging that the stern obligations of political duty allowed him to show no pity upon more than one class of his prisoners, let him alone bear the blame of the deed. He appears to have acted upon his own judgment, and does not, as usual, adduce the command of the Lord for the course which was taken.