Read 51.) Numbers 25:1-18 and 31:1-54. The decades of wilderness wandering passed without notable incident. It had to have been stultifyingly boring. It really meant something though, as we shall very soon see. Here, we read a shocking account of another of Israel’s incredible failings! Perhaps nothing could get a man to fall quicker than the prospect of elicit sex, and in the name of religious celebration and worship at that! Chapter 25 reads how that Balak may have in fact devised a means by which he could get Israel cursed and be able to drive them out. It would have to do with their separation unto their holy God! In seemingly no time at all, the men of Israel were breaking the 1st, 2nd and 6th Commandments. Taking other gods, bowing before idols, and ‘worshiping’ them by engaging in sexual relations with these Moabite women! Exodus 32 was an entire generation ago. These were their sons now doing just as they had 40 years before!
We read of the priest, Phinehas, becoming righteously indignant and slaying an Israelite man and Moabite woman in the very act! The ultimate result was that 24,000 died. This makes sense, as the very last of the first census must perish before they could enter the land… and now the last of these, in their 60’s here, are being slain of the Lord wholesale for their grievous sins, which we only just read were to result in capital punishment! Whatever were these people thinking? They weren’t! The result of all this was that the Midianites were to be forever considered as enemies and to be destroyed. Which brings us to chapter 31…
Israel is to go up against the Midianites, and then Moses is to be gathered to his people. 12,000 are called up to arms and sent out. But note carefully a line in verse 8, “They also killed Balaam son of Beor with the sword.” What? When we last read of Balaam in 24:25, he’d gone hundreds of miles back home! It was Balaam who figured out how he would gain Balak’s promised prize of wealth, so he returned with a plan! If Israel were enticed to sin against their God, He would have to deal with them in judgment, and so they plotted the Moabite seduction of Israel’s men in order to destroy them. Verse 16 confirms this. It was an act of war! And it nearly worked.
However, Israel went to war against Midian and the Lord gave Midian into Israel’s hands. Their victory was so great, not one Israelite soldier was slain! Midian was not entirely destroyed, and we will read of Midianites again in the Bible story. Watch for this name, and of their future role in Israel’s story. It’s what the Book is all about!
ForeverKingdom,
Harold F Crowell
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