Numbers 31

Numbers AN UNFULFILLED DESIRENumbers 23:10 . - Numbers 31:8 . Ponder these two pictures. Take the first scene. A prophet, who knows God and His will, is standing on the mountain top, and as he looks down over the valley beneath him, with its acacia-trees and swift river, there spread the tents of Israel. He sees them, and knows that they are ‘a people whom the Lord hath blessed.’ Brought there to curse, ‘he blesses them altogether’; and as he gazes upon their ordered ranks and sees somewhat of the wondrous future that lay before them, his mind is filled with the thought of all the blessedness of that righteous nation, and the sigh of longing comes to his lips, ‘May I be with them in life and death; may I have no higher honour, no calmer end, than to lie down and die as one of the chosen people, with memories of a divine hand that has protected me all through the past, and quiet hopes of the same hand holding me up in the great darkness!’ A devout aspiration, a worthy desire! Look at the other picture. Midian has seduced Israel to idolatry and its constant companion, sensual sin. The old lawgiver has for his last achievement to punish the idolater. ‘Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites, afterwards thou shalt be gathered to thy people.’ So each tribe gives its contingent to the fight, and under the fierce and prompt Phinehas, whose javelin had already smitten one of the chief offenders, they go forth. Fire and sword, devastation and victory, mark their track.

The princes of Midian fall before the swift rush of the desert-born invaders. And-sad, strange company!-among them is the ‘man who saw the vision of the Almighty, and knew the knowledge of the Most High’ ! he who had taught Moab the purest lessons of morality, and Midian, alas! the practice of the vilest profligacy; he who saw from afar ‘the sceptre arise out of Israel and the Star from Jacob’; he who longed to ‘die the death of the righteous’ ! The onset of the avenging host, with the ‘shout of a king’ in their midst; the terror of the flight, the riot of havoc and bloodshed, and, finally, the quick thrust of the sharp Israelite sword in some strong hand, and the grey hairs all dabbled with his blood-these were what the man came to who had once breathed the honest desire, ‘Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his’ ! I. There is surely a solemn lesson for us all here -as touching the danger of mere vague religious desires and convictions which we do not allow to determine our conduct. Balaam had evidently much knowledge. Look at these points- { a } His knowledge of the covenant-name of God. { b } His knowledge of a pure morality and a spiritual worship far beyond sacrificial notions, and in some respects higher than the then Old Testament standpoint. { c } The knowledge {which is implied in the text} of a future state, which had gone far into the background, even if it had not been altogether lost, among the Israelites.

Numbers 31:1 . Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites — For their malicious designs and practices against Israel, both by hiring Balaam to curse them, and by sending their women to insnare them. The Moabites also were guilty, but God was pleased to spare them, because the measure of their iniquity was not yet full.

Numbers 31:3 . Avenge the Lord — What in the preceding verse is termed avenging Israel, is here called avenging the Lord, because by their idolatry and lewdness, and by seducing God’s people into rebellion against him, they had offered a high affront to him. God’s great care was to avenge the Israelites, and Moses’s chief desire was to avenge God, rather than himself or the people.