The Vengeance of Yahweh: A Holy War Text: Numbers 31:1-12
Introduction: The Offense of a Holy God
We live in a soft age. We live in a sentimental age, an age that has fashioned for itself a god who is a celestial grandfather, endlessly indulgent and terminally vague. Our generation wants a god who would never be so rude as to judge, so intolerant as to demand holiness, or so offensive as to command a war. The modern evangelical mind, which is often just the world in a baptismal gown, is deeply embarrassed by passages like the one before us. They read of holy war, of divine vengeance, of the execution of every male, and they blush. They stammer. They try to change the subject. They want to apologize for God.
But the God of the Bible does not need our apologies. He is not running for office. He is the Holy One of Israel, and His holiness is a consuming fire. What our squishy generation calls intolerant, the Bible calls justice. What we call brutal, the Bible calls righteous judgment. This passage is a stumbling block to the modern mind precisely because it presents us with a God who takes sin seriously, a God who hates evil with a perfect hatred, and a God who will, in His own time and in His own way, utterly destroy it.
This war against Midian is not a random act of aggression. It is not an ethnic squabble over grazing rights. The text is very clear: this is "Yahweh's vengeance on Midian." This is a divinely commanded, judicial act of retribution for a specific and heinous crime. You cannot understand this chapter without understanding Numbers 25. The Midianites, on the wicked counsel of the prophet-for-hire Balaam, had launched a spiritual and sexual attack on Israel at Baal-peor. They used their women as seductive missionaries for idolatry and immorality, seeking to corrupt the covenant people from within. This was not just sin; it was high treason against the King of Heaven. It was a deliberate attempt to rot Israel's soul, to sever their covenant with Yahweh, and to drag them into the orgiastic filth of paganism. And it almost worked. A plague broke out and killed twenty-four thousand Israelites before the zeal of Phinehas turned back God's wrath.
God does not forget. And now, the bill has come due. This is not Israel's war; it is Yahweh's. They are merely the instrument of His judgment, the scalpel in the hand of the Divine Surgeon, cutting out a cancerous tumor that threatened the life of His people and the future of redemption. If we are to understand this, we must set aside our modern, therapeutic sensibilities and adopt a biblical worldview, one that understands the reality of corporate sin, the necessity of divine justice, and the beautiful, terrible holiness of God.
The Text
Then Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, "Take full vengeance for the sons of Israel on the Midianites; afterward you will be gathered to your people." And Moses spoke to the people, saying, "Arm men from among you for the war, that they may go against Midian to execute Yahweh’s vengeance on Midian. One thousand from each tribe of all the tribes of Israel you shall send to the war." So there were furnished from the thousands of Israel, one thousand from each tribe, twelve thousand armed for war. And Moses sent them, one thousand from each tribe, to the war, and Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest, to the war with them, and the holy vessels and the trumpets for the alarm in his hand. So they made war against Midian, just as Yahweh had commanded Moses, and they killed every male. They killed the kings of Midian along with the rest of their slain: Evi and Rekem and Zur and Hur and Reba, the five kings of Midian; they also killed Balaam the son of Beor with the sword. And the sons of Israel captured the women of Midian and their little ones; and all their cattle and all their flocks and all their goods they plundered. Then they burned all their cities where they lived and all their camps with fire. And they took all the spoil and all the loot, both of man and of beast. And they brought the captives and the loot and the spoil to Moses and to Eleazar the priest and to the congregation of the sons of Israel, to the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by the Jordan opposite Jericho.
(Numbers 31:1-12 LSB)
A Divine Mandate for Vengeance (vv. 1-3)
We begin with the clear and direct command from God Himself.
"Then Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, 'Take full vengeance for the sons of Israel on the Midianites; afterward you will be gathered to your people.' And Moses spoke to the people, saying, 'Arm men from among you for the war, that they may go against Midian to execute Yahweh’s vengeance on Midian.'" (Numbers 31:1-3 LSB)
The first thing to notice is the origin of this war. It does not arise from Moses's strategic planning or from some popular outrage among the people. It begins with "Yahweh spoke to Moses." In the Old Testament, the question of a just war was a simple one: obedience or disobedience. God gave specific, direct commands. To go to war when He said not to was sin, and to refuse to go when He commanded it was also sin. Israel was God's covenantal nation, and He governed them directly. This is not a pattern for modern nation-states, because God does not speak to presidents or prime ministers in this way. But here, the command is unequivocal.
The purpose of the war is stated twice: it is vengeance. But whose vengeance? Verse 2 says it is "vengeance for the sons of Israel," and verse 3 clarifies that it is to "execute Yahweh's vengeance on Midian." There is no contradiction here. The attack on Israel at Baal-peor was an attack on Yahweh's people, and therefore an attack on Yahweh Himself. To strike at God's chosen is to poke God in the eye. The vengeance belongs to God (Deut. 32:35), and He is here delegating the execution of that vengeance to His covenant people. They are acting as His judicial agents. This is not personal revenge; it is covenantal justice.
Notice also the solemn note for Moses: "afterward you will be gathered to your people." This is to be Moses's last major act as the leader of Israel. After this final task of executing God's judgment is complete, his work will be done. This adds a certain gravity and finality to the command. Moses is to ensure that this festering evil is dealt with before he departs.
A Holy War, Not a Military Draft (vv. 4-6)
The preparation for this war is unique and instructive.
"One thousand from each tribe of all the tribes of Israel you shall send to the war." So there were furnished from the thousands of Israel, one thousand from each tribe, twelve thousand armed for war. And Moses sent them... and Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest, to the war with them, and the holy vessels and the trumpets for the alarm in his hand." (Numbers 31:4-6 LSB)
Israel had an army of over 600,000 fighting men at this point, but God calls for only 12,000, a thousand from each tribe. This is not a war to be won by overwhelming numbers. This is a token force. God is teaching them, as He would later teach Gideon, that the battle is the Lord's. Their victory will not depend on military might but on divine power. This is a theological statement made with military formation. The symmetrical number, twelve thousand, represents the whole people of God, acting in unified obedience.
And who goes with them? Not a five-star general, but Phinehas the priest. The same Phinehas whose zeal stopped the plague in Numbers 25 by executing the Israelite man and the Midianite woman in their moment of flagrant sin. His presence here is profoundly significant. He is the embodiment of righteous zeal against this specific corruption. He is not going as a soldier but as the spiritual leader of this holy mission. He carries the "holy vessels" and the "trumpets for the alarm." This is not just a battle; it is a worship service with swords. The trumpets were used to call the assembly to worship and to signal the advance in battle. Here, the two functions are one. This war is an act of liturgical judgment.
The Execution of Judgment (vv. 7-8)
The execution of the battle is swift and total, precisely as commanded.
"So they made war against Midian, just as Yahweh had commanded Moses, and they killed every male. They killed the kings of Midian along with the rest of their slain: Evi and Rekem and Zur and Hur and Reba, the five kings of Midian; they also killed Balaam the son of Beor with the sword." (Genesis 31:7-8 LSB)
The key phrase is "just as Yahweh had commanded Moses." This is the standard of righteousness. The soldiers are not acting on bloodlust; they are acting in obedience. The command was to "kill every male." Why? Because in that patriarchal world, the males represented the identity, leadership, and military strength of the nation. This was a judicial sentence of capital punishment on a national scale. The nation as a corporate entity was being executed for its corporate sin. One of the Midianite kings, Zur, was the father of Cozbi, the very woman Phinehas had killed (Num. 25:15). The leadership was directly complicit in this spiritual warfare against Israel.
And then we find the arch-villain. "They also killed Balaam the son of Beor with the sword." Balaam, the renowned prophet, couldn't curse Israel with his mouth, so he devised a more insidious plan. As the Apostle Peter tells us, he "loved the wages of unrighteousness" (2 Pet. 2:15). He taught Balak how to make Israel stumble (Rev. 2:14). He was a true prophet, but not a true man. He knew the will of God and deliberately schemed to subvert it for personal gain. He was found in the camp of the enemy, and so he perished with the enemy. His prophetic gift did not save him from the consequences of his treacherous heart. This is a sobering warning: spiritual gifts are no substitute for a heart of obedience. Balaam was the corrupt theologian who provided the intellectual and spiritual justification for this wickedness. His death was not an accident; it was a targeted execution of the serpent's head.
The Spoils of Holy War (vv. 9-12)
The aftermath of the battle shows the totality of the judgment.
"And the sons of Israel captured the women of Midian and their little ones; and all their cattle and all their flocks and all their goods they plundered. Then they burned all their cities where they lived and all their camps with fire... And they brought the captives and the loot and the spoil to Moses and to Eleazar the priest and to the congregation of the sons of Israel..." (Numbers 31:9-12 LSB)
The soldiers capture the women and children and plunder all the wealth of Midian. Now, our modern sensibilities immediately recoil at this. But we must think biblically. The women were the primary weapons in the attack at Baal-peor. As we see later in the chapter, Moses is furious that the soldiers have spared them, because they were the cause of the plague. A further judgment is executed upon the women who had participated in the idolatry. The principle is this: in a holy war, the instruments of corruption must be dealt with. The judgment must be as thorough as the sin was pervasive.
They burn all their cities and camps with fire. This is the sign of herem, or total devotion to destruction. The places of their idolatry, the infrastructure of their corrupt society, were to be utterly wiped out. This was a cleansing. God was not just punishing individuals; He was erasing a cancerous culture from the face of the earth, a culture that had declared war on Him and His redemptive plan.
Finally, they bring everything back to the camp, to Moses and Eleazar the priest. This is crucial. The spoils of this war do not belong to the soldiers who fought. They belong to Yahweh, whose war it was. The disposition of the captives and the loot will be determined by God's law, administered through the priest. This prevents the war from devolving into a greedy, self-serving raid. It maintains the character of the war as a holy, judicial act from start to finish. The soldiers were God's bailiffs, not conquerors enriching themselves.
Conclusion: The Sword of the Mouth
So what are we to do with a passage like this? We are not called to take up literal swords against the Midianites of our day. The era of theocratic holy war, with direct commands from God, is over. It was a unique period in redemptive history, a type and a shadow of a greater reality.
But the principle of God's vengeance against sin remains. The God who judged Midian is the same God who judged His own Son on the cross for our sins. The cross was the ultimate act of holy war, where God executed perfect vengeance against sin, pouring out His full wrath upon Christ. If you are in Christ, the judgment you deserve has already fallen upon Him. You are safe.
But if you are not in Christ, you are still in the camp of the enemy. The same holy wrath that consumed Midian abides on you. The warning of this passage is that God's patience has a limit. The iniquity of the Amorites eventually becomes full. The sin of Midian eventually demands vengeance.
And for the church, the warning is found in the book of Revelation. Jesus confronts the church at Pergamum, a church that was tolerating those who held the "doctrine of Balaam," which led to sexual immorality and idolatry. And what does Jesus threaten? "Repent; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth" (Rev. 2:16). The war is now fought with the Word of God. The sword that comes from the mouth of Christ is the weapon that executes judgment. The church today is filled with the spirit of Midian, tolerating sexual sin, compromising with idolatry, listening to the counsel of Balaamites who love the wages of unrighteousness. We have invited the enemy into our camp.
This passage calls us to the zeal of Phinehas. It calls us to hate what God hates. It calls us to wage war, not with carnal weapons, but with the spiritual weapons of truth, righteousness, and the preached Word. We are to execute Yahweh's vengeance by declaring His holy standards, by calling sin what it is, and by refusing to tolerate the doctrine of Balaam in our midst. God is still a consuming fire, and He still demands holiness from His people. Let us therefore repent of our cowardly tolerance and take up the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and fight as we have been commanded.