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Numbers 16:40
To be a memorial unto the children of Israel, that no stranger, whichis not of the seed of Aaron, come near to offer incense before the LORD; that he be not as Korah, and as his company: as the LORD said to him by the hand of Moses.

Exodus 30:16
And thou shalt take the atonement money of the children of Israel, and shalt appoint it for the service of the tabernacle of the congregation; that it may be a memorial unto the children of Israel before the LORD, to make an atonement for your souls.

Joshua 4:7
Then ye shall answer them, That the waters of Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD; when it passed over Jordan, the waters of Jordan were cut off: and these stones shall be for a memorial unto the children of Israel for ever.

from the commanders of thousands and of hundreds
The commanders of thousands and hundreds refer to the military leaders of Israel, indicating a structured and organized army. This structure reflects the military organization established by Moses, as seen inExodus 18 when Jethro advised Moses to appoint leaders over groups of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens. The mention of these commanders emphasizes the collective contribution and responsibility of the entire community in dedicating the spoils to God.

and brought it into the Tent of Meeting
The Tent of Meeting, also known as the Tabernacle, was the central place of worship and the dwelling place of God's presence among the Israelites. Bringing the gold into the Tent of Meeting signifies dedicating it to God, acknowledging His sovereignty and provision. This act of bringing offerings to the Tabernacle is a precursor to the later practices in the Temple in Jerusalem, where offerings and sacrifices were central to worship.

as a memorial for the Israelites
The gold served as a memorial, a physical reminder of God's deliverance and provision. Memorials in the Bible often serve to remind the people of God's past faithfulness and to encourage future obedience. This concept is seen in other biblical instances, such as the stones set up by Joshua after crossing the Jordan River (Joshua 4:7). The memorial aspect underscores the importance of remembering God's acts and maintaining a covenant relationship with Him.

before the LORD
The phrase "before the LORD" indicates that the offering was made in the presence of God, signifying His acceptance and the sanctity of the act. It reflects the belief that all actions, especially those involving worship and offerings, are ultimately directed towards God. This phrase also connects to the broader biblical theme of living one's life coram Deo, or "before the face of God," emphasizing accountability and reverence in all aspects of life.

• Scripture presents Moses, the covenant mediator (Exodus 3:10–12), partnering with Eleazar, the newly appointed high priest after Aaron’s death (Numbers 20:25–28).

• Their joint action underscores that both civil and spiritual authority are working in harmony, reflecting God’s design that leadership over Israel’s life and worship remain inseparable (Deuteronomy 17:8–12).

• By naming them together, the text highlights accountability; no private enrichment is possible when the nation’s most trusted leaders stand side by side (compare2 Kings 12:15).

• The gold represents the Lord’s portion from the Midianite war spoils (Numbers 31:25–31).

• Accepting it “received” rather than “took” shows they act as stewards, not owners (1 Chronicles 29:14).

• Gold, the most precious metal, signifies value placed on obedience; Israel’s victory and wealth are acknowledged as gifts from God (Deuteronomy 8:17–18).

• Military leaders surrender the plunder voluntarily, demonstrating corporate gratitude and submission (1 Samuel 30:24–25).

• The inclusion of both “thousands” and “hundreds” ensures everyone—from the highest to the lower ranks—participates in honoring God (2 Corinthians 8:12).

• Such transparency prevents covetousness that once cursed Israel at Ai (Joshua 7:1).

• The Tent is the earthly focal point of divine presence (Exodus 25:8). By placing the gold there, the people publicly confess: “The battle belongs to the LORD” (1 Samuel 17:47).

• This act keeps sacred wealth away from personal hoarding, unlike the golden calf episode (Exodus 32:2–4).

• Giving first to God teaches future generations the priority of worship before personal use (Proverbs 3:9).

• A “memorial” serves as a perpetual reminder; the gold continually testifies to God’s deliverance and the people’s gratitude (Exodus 12:14).

• The placement “before the LORD” emphasizes that it is God—not Israel—who must remember the covenant promises (Genesis 9:16).

• Memorial offerings encourage ongoing faithfulness; each time Israel gathers, they recall that victory and prosperity flow from obedience (Psalm 103:2).

Numbers 31:54 records a deliberate, transparent act of worship: national leaders receive wartime gold, surrender it to God, and deposit it in the Tent of Meeting so future generations will never forget that deliverance, wealth, and blessing come from the LORD alone.

I. That the Midianites had injured Israel is clear; as also that they had done so deliberately, craftily, and successfully, under the advice of Balaam. They had so acted as ife.g., a modern nation were to pour its opium into the ports of a dreaded neighbour in time of peace, not simply for the sake of gain (which is base enough), but with deliberate intent to ruin the morals and destroy the manhood of the nation. Such a course of action, if proved, would be held to justify any reprisals possible within the limits of legitimate war; Christian nations have avenged far less weighty injuries by bloody wars in this very century. Midian, therefore, was attacked by a detachment of the Israelites, and for some reason seems to have been unable either to fight or to fly. Thereupon all the men (i.e., all who bore arms) were slain; the towns and hamlets were destroyed; the women, children, and cattle driven off as booty. So far the Israelites had but followed the ordinary customs of war, with this great exception in their favour, that they offered (as is evident from the narrative) no violence to the women. Upon their return to the camp Moses was greatly displeased at the fact of the Midianitish women having been brought in, and gave orders that all the male children and all the women who were not virgins were to be slain. The inspection necessary to determine the latter point was left presumably to the soldiers. The Targum of Palestine indeed inserts a fable concerning some miraculous, or rather magical, test which was used to decide the question in each individual case. But this is simply a fable invented to avoid a disagreeable conclusion; both soldiers and captives were unclean, and were kept apart; and the narrative clearly implies that there was no communication between them and the people at large until long after the slaughter was over. To put the matter boldly, we have to face the fact that, under Moses' directions, 12,000 soldiers had to deal with perhaps 50,000 women, first by ascertaining that they were notvirgins, and then by killing them in cold blood. It is a small additional horror that a multitude of infants must have perished directly or indirectly with their mothers.

II. It is commonly urged in vindication of this massacre that the war was God's war, and that God had a perfect right to exterminate a most guilty people. This is true in a sense. If God had been pleased to visit the Midianites with pestilence, famine, or hordes of savages worse than themselves, no one would have charged him with injustice. All who believe in an over-ruling Providence believe that in one way or other God has provided that great wickedness in a nation shall be greatly punished. But that is beside the question altogether; the difficulty is, not that the Midianites were exterminated, but that they were exterminated in an inhuman manner by the Israelites. If they had been so many swine the work would have been revolting; being men, women, and children, with all the ineffaceable beauty, interest, and hope of our common humanity upon them, the very soul sickens to think upon the cruel details of their slaughter. An ordinarily good man, sharing the feelings which do honour to the present century, would certainly have flung down his sword and braved all wrath human or Divine, rather than go on with so hateful a work; and there is not surely any Christian teacher who would not say that he acted quite rightly; if such orders proceeded from God's undoubted representative today, it would be necessary deliberately to disobey them. It is urged again that the question at issue really was, "whether an obscene and debasing idolatry should undermine the foundations of human society," or whether an awful judgment should at once stamp out the sinners, and brand the sin for ever. But no such question was at issue. There were obscene and debasing idolatries in abundance round about Israel, but no effort was made to exterminate them; the Moabites in particular seem to have been just as licentious as the Midianites at this time (seeNumbers 25:1-3), and certainly were quite as idolatrous, and yet they were passed by. Indeed the argument shows an entire failure, so to speak, in moral perspective. Harlotry and idolatry are great sins, but there is no reason to believe that God deals with them otherwise than he does with other sins. It was no part of the Divine intention concerning Israel that he should go about as a knight-errant avenging "obscene idolatries." Many a nation just as immoral as Midian rose to greatness, and displayed some valuable virtues, and (it is to be presumed) did some good work in God's world in preparation for the fullness of time. Harlotry and idolatry prevail to a frightful extent in Great Britain; but any attempt to pursue them with pains and penalties would be scorned by the conscience of the nation as Pharisaical. The fact is (and it is so obvious that it ought not to have been overlooked) that Midian was overthrown, not because he was given over to an "obscene idolatry," wherein he was probably neither much better nor much worse than his neighbours; but because he had made an unprovoked, crafty, and successful attack upon God's people, and had brought thousands of them to a shameful death. The motive which prompted the attack upon them was not horror of their sins, nor fear of their contamination, but vengeance; Midian was smitten avowedly "to avenge the children of Israel" (verse 2) who had fallen through Baal-peor, and at the same time "to avenge the Lord" (verse 3), who had been obliged to slay his own people.

III. The true justification of these proceedings - which we should now call, and justly call, atrocities - divides itself into two parts. In the first place, we have to deal only with the fact that an expedition was sent by Divine command, to smite the Midianites. Now, this does indeed open up a very difficult moral question, but it does not involve any special difficulty of its own. It is certain that wars of revenge were freely sanctioned under the Old Testament dispensation (see on Exodus 17:14-16; 1 Samuel 15:2, 3). It is practically conceded that they are permitted by the New Testament dispensation. At any rate Christian nations habitually wage wars of revenge even against half-armed savages, and many of those who counsel or carry on such wars are men of really religious character. It is possible that if the principles of the New Testament take a deeper hold upon the national conscience, all such wars will be regarded as crimes. This means simply, that in regard to war the moral sentiment of religious people has changed, and is changing very materially from age to age. Even a bad man will shrink from doing today what a good man would have done without the least scruple some centuries ago; and (if the world last) a bad man will be able sincerely to denounce some centuries hence what a good man can bring himself to do with a clear conscience today. Now it has been pointed out again and again that when God assumed the Jews to be his peculiar people, he assumed them not only in the social and political stage, but in the moral stage also, which belonged to their place in the world and in history. Just as God adopted, as King of Israel, the social and political ideas which then prevailed, and made the best of them; in like manner he adopted the moral ideas then current, and made the best of them, so restraining them in one direction, and so enforcing them in another, and so bringing them all under the influence of religious sanctions, as to prepare the way for the bringing in of a higher morality. What God did for the Jews was not to teach them the precepts of a lofty and perfect morality, which was indeed only possible in connection with the revelation of his Son, but to teach them to act in all things from religious motives, and with direct reference to his good pleasure. Accordingly God himself, especially in the earlier part of their history as a nation, undertook to guide their vengeance, and taught them to look upon wars of vengeance (since their conscience freely sanctioned them) as waged for his honour and glory, not their own. If this seem to any one unworthy of the Divine Beings let him consider for a moment, that on no other condition was the Old Testament dispensation possible. If God was to be the Head of a nation among nations, he must regulate all its affairs, personal, social, and national. We escape the difficulty, and wage wars of vengeance, and commit other acts of doubtful morality, without compromising our religion, because our religion is strictly personal, and our wars are strictly national. But the Old Testament dispensation was emphatically temporal and national; all responsibility for all public acts devolved upon the King of Israel himself. It was absolutely necessary, then, either that God should reveal Christian morality without Christ (which is as though one should have heat without the sun, or a poem without a poet); or that he should sanction the morality then current in its best form, and teach men to walk bravely and devoutly according to the light of their own conscience. That light was dim enough in some ways, but it was slowly growing clearer through the gradual revelation which God made of himself; and even now it is growing clearer, and still while religion remains fundamentally the same, morality is distinctly advancing, and good people are learning to abhor today what they did in the faith and fear of God but yesterday. Take,e.g., that saying, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay." For the Jew it meant that in waging wars of vengeance he fought as the Lord's soldier and not as in a private quarrel. For the Christian of the present day it means that revenge of private injuries is to be left altogether to the just judgment of the last day. To the Christian of some future age it will mean that all revenge for injuries and humiliations, private or public, individual or national, must be left to the justice of him who ordereth all things in this world or the world to come. Each has a different standard of morality; yet each, even in doing what another will abhor, may claim the Divine sanction, for each acts truly and religiously according to his lights. This being so, it is only necessary further to point out that the slaying of all the men whom they could get at was the ordinary custom of war in those days, when no distinction could be drawn between combatants and non-combatants. The practice of war in this respect is entirely determined by the sentiment of the age, and is always in the nature of a compromise between the desire to kill and the desire to spare. As these two desires can never be reconciled, they divide the field between them with a curious inconsistency. The first is satisfied by the ever-increasing destructiveness of war; the second is gratified by the alleviations which strict discipline and skilled assistance can procure for the vanquished and the wounded. Whether ancient or modern wars really left the larger tale of misery behind them is a matter of great doubt; but at any rate the custom of war sanctioned the slaughter of all the combatants,i.e., of all the men, at that time; and if war is to be waged at all, it must be allowed to follow the ordinary practice. In the second place, however, we have to deal with horrors of an exceptional character, in the subsequent slaughter of the women and boys. Now it is to be observed that the orders for this slaughter proceeded from Moses alone. According to the narrative of verse 13 sq., Moses went out of the camp, and on perceiving the state of the case, gave instructions at once while his anger was hot. It is possible that he sought for Divine guidance, but it does not appear that he did, but rather that he acted upon his own judgment, and under the ordinary guidance of his own conscience. We have not, therefore, to face the difficulty of a direct command from God, but only the difficulty of a holy man, full of heavenly wisdom, having ordered a butchery so abhorrent to our modern feelings. Let it then in all fairness be observed - . . .

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