WHY DID MOSES TELL THE ISRAELITES TO PRESERVE THE MIDIANITE VIRGINS?

 

“And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods.” (Numbers 31:9) “But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.” (Numbers 31:18)

(I read a comment on Facebook in which a woman claimed that the Bible is perverted and in Numbers 31 God allowed Israelite men to marry prepubescent girls, so I decided to write this.)

There was a time when I thought Numbers 31 was a case of Israelite men letting their lust cloud their judgement, and I have come across commentaries that claim these men were perverted. Over time I came to realise that those women were considered good potential wives because those women were virtuous. Allow me to explain.

Consider the events leading up to the battle of Numbers 31:

• The Israelites were close to the end of their Wilderness Journey and close to entering Canaan. (Numbers 22)

• The king of the Moabites, Balak, conspired with the Midianites to launch a hostile campaign against the Israelites. Numbers 22)

• Balak hired the prophet Balaam to curse the Israelites. When the curses failed Balaam advised Moabite and Midianite leaders to infiltrate the Israelite camp and corrupt them from within through sexual deception. (Numbers 22-25)

• God judged the Israelites for their idolatry and immorality and 24,000 Israelites died in the plaque. (Numbers 25:9)

• God told Moses to kill the Midianites. (Numbers 25:17-18)

When considering why the Israelites were told to preserve these Midianite virgins, here are a few points to keep in mind:

• Total annihilation was normally reserved for the Canaanites. Midian was not in Canaan, but their idolatry, their hiring Balaam to curse Israel, their luring the Israelites into sin, and their alliance with Amorites brought the Midianites under the curse of Canaan, and killing all the males had the effect of wiping out the people of Midian. (Joshua 13:21; Food for thought: Why did God command the genocide of the Canaanites?  Why were the virgins spared from being killed? )

• Before the battle they did not have the option of leaving home and assimilating into the camp of Israel.

• The word rendered “children” (Hebrew: Taph) in Numbers 31:18 can refer to prepubescent children, but not necessarily. Taph basically signifies the members of a nomadic tribe that cannot march or can only march to a limited extent, the weaker ones.

• In Bible times girls were normally married in their early teens. The girls considered marriageable would have been taken as wives and the younger ones were taken into families until they were of age to marry. Does the Bible say what is the proper age for marriage?

• The Canaanite Baalism practiced by Midianites required “women children” to lose their virginity through temple prostitution as an act of worship to pagan deities. (Why were they still virgins? Read between the lines.)