What to Do with the Hard Passages in the Bible? (Numbers 31-36)

A Few Thoughts to Consider

Is God a Moral Monster?

This was the title of Paul Copan’s book, which answers some of the more challenging scripture passages. Numbers 31 is undoubtedly one of these such passages. Keep in mind the historical context of this chapter. Balaam, after blessing Israel, encourages King Balak of Moab to use the woman of Moab to seduce the Israelite men into orgiastic adultery and Baal worship. In response, the Israelites: 

⁷ waged war against Midian, as the Lord had commanded Moses, and killed every male. ⁸ Along with the others slain by them, they killed the Midianite kings—Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba, the five kings of Midian. They also killed Balaam son of Beor with the sword. ⁹ The Israelites took the Midianite women and their dependents captive, and they plundered all their cattle, flocks, and property. ¹⁰ Then they burned all the cities where the Midianites lived, as well as all their encampments, ¹¹ and took away all the spoils of war and the captives, both people and animals. ¹² They brought the prisoners, animals, and spoils of war to Moses, the priest Eleazar, and the Israelite community at the camp on the plains of Moab by the Jordan across from Jericho.

As if that’s not a gruesome enough picture, God says in verses 17-18, ¹⁷ “So now, kill every male among the dependents and kill every woman who has gone to bed with a man, ¹⁸ but keep alive for yourselves all the young females who have not gone to bed with a man.”

So what is going on here? Some authors advocate for a nonviolent understanding of God and argue that certain Old Testament narratives depict a human projection of violence onto God rather than accurately reflecting the divine character. They contend that Jesus' teachings and life exemplify a nonviolent God and interpret the conquest passages as a reflection of the ancient Israelites' cultural and historical context rather than a faithful representation of God's nature. But this view raises more questions than answers. As Roy Gane writes,

Those of us who accept the entire Bible as the Word of God have no choice but to admit that God sometimes gives up on groups of people and chooses to destroy them (Gen. 6–7; 19; Rev. 20), and that during a certain phase of history he uniquely delegated a carefully restricted part of his destructive work to his chosen nation of ancient Israel, which he tightly controlled and held accountable under theocratic rule.^[1]

Often, it’s only as we look closer at a troubling passage that some of the pieces start to make sense. Evidently, the sin of the Midianites was so great that God determined death was the only option. (Numbers 25:16-17) And as Roy Gane notes, there are several indicators that God was indeed merciful to the Midianites before giving this command.

1.     He gave these people ample opportunity to know him through witnesses such as Abraham and Melchizedek (e.g., Gen. 14:17–24).

2.     He kept his people of Israel waiting in Egypt until the end of four centuries of probation for the Amorites (Gen. 15:13, 16). This is more than three times the 120 years he gave the antediluvian world (6:3).

3.     Depraved inhabitants of Canaan practiced gross immorality (e.g., Lev. 18:3, 27–28) and child sacrifice (e.g., Deut. 12:31). If God hadn’t destroyed them, he would have owed the people of Sodom and Gomorrah an apology (cf. Gen. 18–19).

4.     As exemplified by what happened at Shittim (Num. 25), idolatrous and immoral men and women in close proximity to the Israelites would inevitably corrupt them and thereby cause their destruction (Deut. 7:4; 20:18). The Lord’s ideal for the Israelites was incompatible with the Canaanite environment.