Numbers 31

I've never been in active combat myself, but I'm guessing that it's nowhere near as enjoyable (and loopy) as pretending to be a soldier in Halo or Call of Duty. Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan portrays the chaos, confusion, and utter pandemonium of battle in the 1940s while Ridley Scott's Gladiator does much the same for ancient warfare. When God tells Moses to muster a thousand men from each Israelite tribe for battle, it's for a good reason: vengeance on the Midianites who insidiously seduced certain Israelites into spurning God in favor of orgies in "honor" of idols. Yet reading about the "captives, spoils, and plunder" (verse 12) reveals the sad and inevitable brutality that comes with warfare.

But the Bible is stuffed to the seams with battles, so what makes this one different? Well, verse 9 says, "The Israelites captured the Midianite women and children." Fair enough. But then, Moses reprimands the army for taking them captive instead of killing them. He gives a valid justification regarding the women, reminding the soldiers that women had seduced the Israelites in the first place. Women and men can be equally evil, though sometimes in different ways. This reminds me of a nugget from comedian Louis C. K. describing the difference between boys and girls: "Boys f*** things up. Girls are f***ed up."

While obviously a generalization, this little maxim is true to some extent: The more unprincipled men in the Bible have gone about laying waste to cities and ravaging both women and men alike, while the women have been more crafty and subtle in their evildoing--as they proved in this situation. However, what I find more discomfiting is what Moses says about the children: "Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man" (verses 17-18). Doesn't this seem a little, well, icky? And dare I say that it resembles Pharaoh's edict to kill all the newborn Israelite boys? In fact, it reminds me of what male lions do when they take over a pride: they kill off all the cubs that haven't sprung from that lion's loins. Makes sense for lions I suppose, but humans aren't lions, no matter what Matthew Broderick, Jeremy Irons, and James Earl Jones want you to think

To be fair, the Bible doesn't specify the ages of those who had to be killed. Maybe "boys and girls" in this case referred to younger men and women. The killing of young children doesn't sit well with me. Yes, God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, but that was just a test. But if the children in this chapter really were grade-school age and below, that makes me profoundly uneasy--which means that this post will have to end on an unresolved note, I'm afraid.