Numbers 31 Footnotes

31:6-12 The model for holy war has the priest Phinehas accompanying the army of twelve thousand into battle, taking the sanctuary vessels for purification rites and the trumpets for sounding the battle alerts (10:1-10). Centuries later, the Dead Sea scroll document, styled “The War of the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness,” replicates this model. The passage presents a terse summary of the battle in typical OT narrative fashion with expansion of detail regarding the proper disposition of spoils of war. The section emphasizes how the purity of the congregation is maintained and how the goods are distributed proportionately among the twelve tribes and the priests and Levites.

31:13-24 The purpose of holy war was the eradication of impure elements, whether persons or property, from a given geographic region. This passage harks back to the idolatrous activity of Baal-peor (chap. 25) and sets the stage for the instructions in 33:50-56 for occupying the promised land by dispossessing the Canaanites and eradicating the marks of their false religion. Hence it is integral to the main theme developed in the book of Numbers: the dangers of rebellion and idolatry. Critics, who suggest this holy-war mentality was a crude feature of ancient cultures and not in keeping with God’s purpose for humanity, have ignored the fact that these instructions were applicable at this critical point in the formation of the theocracy of Israel. Their very survival as the holy community of faith was at stake. Chapter 31 is consistent with the directives given in other pentateuchal passages, including Dt 7:5,24-25; 12:1-12; 20:16-20 (purging of idolatry); and Dt 21:10-14 (female captives). However, the law of Christ, the law of love, supersedes the instructions for Israel in the era of Moses and Joshua. While God still abhors every kind of evil in society, and the people of God must diligently oppose its every expression, “holy war” of the kind recorded here is not the proper response.