Numbers 31 recounts one of the most morally troubling episodes in the Hebrew Bible. After the Israelites defeated the Midianites in battle, Moses was angry that the soldiers had allowed the women and children to live. He then commanded:
"Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known a man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves." Numbers 31:17-18 (ESV)1
The soldiers complied. The text records that 32,000 virgin girls were taken as plunder, with 32 of them given to the priests as "the LORD's tribute."2 This passage raises profound questions about the nature of divine commands, the treatment of captives in ancient warfare, and whether actions attributed to God can be reconciled with modern moral standards.
The biblical account
The war against Midian is presented as divinely commanded vengeance.
"The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 'Avenge the people of Israel on the Midianites. Afterward you shall be gathered to your people.'" Numbers 31:1-2 (ESV)1
Moses then sent 12,000 soldiers, 1,000 from each tribe, to attack Midian under the leadership of Phinehas the priest.1 The Israelites killed all the Midianite men, including five kings and the prophet Balaam, burned their cities and encampments, and took the women, children, and livestock as plunder.1
When the army returned, Moses met them outside the camp and was furious that they had allowed the women to live. Numbers 31:14-18 records:
"Moses was angry with the officers of the army, the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds, who had come from service in the war. Moses said to them, 'Have you let all the women live? Behold, these, on Balaam's advice, caused the people of Israel to act treacherously against the LORD in the incident of Peor, and so the plague came among the congregation of the LORD. Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known a man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves.'" Numbers 31:14-18 (ESV)1
The command is explicit and detailed. The soldiers were to distinguish between women who had "known a man" sexually and those who had not. All males, including children described as "little ones" (Hebrew: taph), were to be killed. All non-virgin women were to be killed. Only the virgin girls were to be spared, and they were to be kept "for yourselves" by the soldiers.1
The plunder and its distribution
The text provides precise accounting of the spoils of war.
"Now the plunder remaining of the spoil that the army took was 675,000 sheep, 72,000 cattle, 61,000 donkeys, and 32,000 persons in all, the women who had not known a man by lying with him." Numbers 31:32-35 (ESV)2
The 32,000 virgin girls are listed alongside livestock as plunder taken in the campaign. They are referred to not by name or family but as "persons" (nephesh) enumerated with sheep, cattle, and donkeys.2
The distribution of the plunder followed specific rules. Half went to the soldiers who had fought, and half to the congregation of Israel.2 From each portion, a tribute was taken for the LORD. From the soldiers' half, one out of every five hundred was given as a "tribute for the LORD" to Eleazar the priest. From the congregation's half, one out of every fifty was given to the Levites.2
Distribution of virgin girls as plunder2
| Allocation | Number of virgins | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Fighting men's share | 16,000 | Half of total |
| LORD's tribute (from soldiers) | 32 | 1 in 500, given to priests |
| Congregation's share | 16,000 | Half of total |
| Levites' portion | 320 | 1 in 50 |
| Total | 32,000 |
The phrase "the LORD's tribute" applied to the 32 virgins given to the priests has prompted considerable scholarly discussion.
"The persons were 16,000, of which the LORD's tribute was 32 persons. And Moses gave the tribute, which was the contribution for the LORD, to Eleazar the priest." Numbers 31:40-41 (ESV)2
What became of these 32 women given as an offering to God is not specified. Some scholars suggest they may have become cultic servants assisting with tabernacle duties, though the text does not clarify their fate.3
The Baal Peor context
The war against Midian is presented as retribution for events described in Numbers 25. That chapter recounts how Israelite men "began to whore with the daughters of Moab" and were drawn into worshipping Baal of Peor, a local deity.4 The LORD's anger was kindled, and a plague struck the Israelites, killing 24,000 people before it was stopped when Phinehas killed an Israelite man and a Midianite woman who had entered the camp together.4
Following this incident, Numbers 25:16-18 records God commanding Moses:
"Harass the Midianites and strike them down, for they have harassed you with their wiles, with which they beguiled you in the matter of Peor." Numbers 25:16-18 (ESV)4
This provides the stated justification for the war in Numbers 31: the Midianite women had led Israelite men into idolatry and sexual immorality, causing divine punishment.1
However, the text presents tensions that scholars have long noted. Moses himself had a Midianite wife, Zipporah, and a Midianite father-in-law, Jethro, who had helped him establish Israel's judicial system.5 The command to exterminate the Midianites sits uneasily alongside these earlier positive portrayals of Midianite-Israelite relations.3 Biblical scholars have noted that on both thematic and linguistic grounds, Numbers 31 belongs to the Priestly source (P), a later editorial layer that may have added the Midianites into this narrative for theological purposes.3
Scholarly interpretation of "keep for yourselves"
The phrase "keep alive for yourselves" (Hebrew: hahayu lakhem) has generated substantial scholarly debate about what fate awaited the 32,000 virgin girls. The interpretive question is whether the soldiers were to take these girls as wives, as servants, or for sexual use without formal marriage.
Shaye J. D. Cohen, the Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy at Harvard University, argued that "the implications of Numbers 31:17-18 are unambiguous... we may be sure that 'for yourselves' means that the warriors may 'use' their virgin captives sexually."6 Cohen noted that the Hebrew lakhem ("for yourselves") is unambiguous in its implications, and that "the intent of 'for yourselves' is sexual or matrimonial is obvious."6
However, Cohen also acknowledged that rabbinical commentaries in the Talmud (B. Qiddushin and Yevamot) claimed that "for yourselves" meant "as servants."6 Later Jewish and Christian apologists adopted this interpretation, arguing that the virgins were taken into Israelite households as domestic workers rather than for sexual purposes.7
Dennis T. Olson, Professor of Old Testament Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, observed that the soldiers' actions in Numbers 31 closely followed the holy war regulations in Deuteronomy 20:14, which permitted taking women and children as plunder from distant cities.8 However, Moses was angry because he wanted an even more thorough destruction: the killing of male children and non-virgin women, which went beyond these regulations.8
Related war regulations
Other Pentateuchal passages provide context for understanding the treatment of female captives. Deuteronomy 21:10-14 describes a procedure for an Israelite soldier who desires a beautiful woman among the captives:
"The woman is to be brought to his home, shave her head, trim her nails, and discard her captive's garments. She must then be given a full month to mourn her father and mother before the man may have sexual relations with her, thereby making her his wife." Deuteronomy 21:10-14 (ESV)9
This passage has been interpreted by some scholars as providing protections for captive women that were unusual in the ancient Near East, prohibiting immediate rape and requiring formal marriage.9 However, others note that the woman has no choice in the matter: she is taken without consent, subjected to rituals that strip her of her previous identity, and then made a wife or released as a free woman if the man "has no delight in her."9 The absence of choice makes this, at minimum, forced marriage to one's captor.10
Deuteronomy 20:14 provides broader regulations:
"But the women and the little ones, the livestock, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as plunder for yourselves." Deuteronomy 20:14 (ESV)11
This applies to distant cities, not to the Canaanite nations within the promised land, who were to be completely destroyed (herem).11 The Numbers 31 command goes further than Deuteronomy 20:14 by requiring the killing of male children and non-virgin women.8
The victims
The command to kill "every male among the little ones" means that boys of all ages were to be executed. The Hebrew word taph typically refers to young children, often translated as "little ones" or "children."1 These were not combatants. They had not participated in any battle or in the events at Baal Peor. They were killed for being male and Midianite.
The women who had "known a man by lying with him" were also to be killed. The text does not distinguish between women who may have been involved in the Baal Peor incident and those who were not. Any woman who had had sexual relations was condemned to death.1 This would have included married women, widows, and any woman who had previously had sexual intercourse, regardless of her role in any alleged offense against Israel.
The question of how virginity was determined is not addressed in the text. In ancient Israel, virginity testing typically involved inspecting for blood on bedsheets after first intercourse or other physical examination.12 How soldiers in the field made such determinations for thousands of women and girls remains unclear. Some scholars suggest that younger girls would have been presumed virgins based on their age, while others note that the text simply does not explain the methodology.7
The ages of the virgin girls taken as plunder are not specified. In ancient Israel, girls were typically betrothed around age twelve, near puberty, with marriage following approximately a year later.13 Girls younger than this would have been more likely to be virgins. The 32,000 virgins taken would therefore have included girls of varying ages, potentially including very young children.7
Apologetic responses
Christian and Jewish apologists have offered various defenses of the Numbers 31 account. These deserve consideration, though each raises additional questions.
The retribution defense
The most common defense holds that the war against Midian was divine retribution for the seduction at Baal Peor, which had caused a plague killing 24,000 Israelites.14 On this view, the Midianites were not innocent victims but aggressors who had attacked Israel through sexual and religious temptation. The severity of the punishment matched the severity of their offense.14
This defense does not explain why male children who were not yet born or were infants during the Baal Peor incident deserved death. It does not explain why women who may have had no involvement in the affair at Peor were killed simply for having had sexual relations. The punishment was collective, falling on those who could not have been personally guilty of any offense.15
The pre-emptive defense
Some apologists argue that the male children were killed to prevent future revenge. Had they been allowed to grow up, they would likely have sought to avenge their fathers and grandfathers, perpetuating a cycle of violence.14 Killing them was, on this view, a tragic but necessary measure to ensure Israel's future security.
This is pre-crime punishment: executing individuals not for what they have done but for what they might do. Such reasoning is widely rejected in moral philosophy and jurisprudence.16 If the boys had free will, their future choices were not predetermined, and killing them for hypothetical crimes they might never commit is unjust. If they lacked free will and their revenge was inevitable, then they would not be morally responsible for it anyway.16
The marriage defense
Regarding the virgin girls, some defenders argue that "keep for yourselves" meant marriage, not rape or sexual slavery.7 The girls would have been taken into Israelite families, raised in the faith, and eventually married according to the laws in Deuteronomy 21:10-14.7 This was not exploitation but rescue: the girls were saved from death and given homes in Israel.
This defense faces several problems. First, the girls had just witnessed the killing of their fathers, brothers, and mothers. They were then taken as property by the very men who killed their families. Even if subsequent treatment was technically "marriage," the trauma and coercion involved makes consent meaningless.10 Second, the text lists the virgins alongside sheep, cattle, and donkeys as plunder; they are categorized as property, not as future family members.2 Third, what became of girls too young for marriage is not addressed. Were five-year-olds given to soldiers to be raised as future wives?7
The divine sovereignty defense
Some theologians argue that God, as the author of life, has the right to command what humans may not do on their own authority.17 Because God gives life, God may take it, and what would be murder for a human is simply the exercise of divine prerogative. Humans cannot judge God by human moral standards.
This defense encounters the Euthyphro dilemma: is an action good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good?18 If actions are good simply because God commands them, then "good" becomes meaningless, synonymous with "whatever God wills." On this view, if God commanded torturing infants for entertainment, that would be good by definition. Most people, including most theists, find this conclusion unacceptable.18 If, however, there is a standard of goodness independent of God's commands, then divine actions can be evaluated against that standard, and the killing of children for the sins of their parents appears morally problematic regardless of who commands it.
Ancient Near Eastern context
The massacre of defeated populations was not unique to Israel in the ancient Near East. Assyrian royal inscriptions describe similar practices, including the deportation and killing of conquered peoples.19 The Moabite Stone (Mesha Stele) describes King Mesha of Moab slaughtering the entire population of the Israelite town of Nebo, including 7,000 people, as herem devoted to his god Chemosh.20 Such practices were not aberrations but part of ancient warfare.
However, this context explains the narrative's existence; it does not justify it morally. That other ancient cultures practiced mass killing does not make mass killing right. Moreover, the biblical text presents this massacre not merely as human warfare but as divinely commanded and approved. The LORD explicitly told Moses to "avenge" Israel on the Midianites.1 The problem is not simply that ancient Israelites did what other ancient peoples did, but that the text claims God ordered it.
Scale of the Midianite plunder compared to biblical Israel2
Critical assessment
Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion, cited the Numbers 31 passage as evidence for his characterization of the Old Testament God as "a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser."21 He asked: "How is this story of Moses morally distinguishable from Hitler's rape of Poland, or Saddam Hussein's massacre of the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs?"21 While the comparison is rhetorically provocative, it poses a genuine question: if a human leader ordered the killing of all male children and all non-virgin women while distributing virgin girls as plunder, that leader would be considered a war criminal by modern standards.22
The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defines crimes against humanity to include murder, enslavement, sexual slavery, and "other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering."22 By these definitions, the actions described in Numbers 31 would constitute multiple crimes against humanity if performed today. The question is whether the identity of the one commanding such actions, whether human or divine, changes their moral character.
The moral question
Numbers 31 presents a stark challenge to those who view the Bible as a source of moral guidance. The passage describes, in explicit detail, the killing of male children and women, the taking of 32,000 girls as plunder distributed alongside livestock, and the giving of 32 virgins as "the LORD's tribute" to the priests. These events are presented not as tragedy or aberration but as the fulfillment of divine command.
The defense that God operates by different moral rules than humans raises the question of what "morality" means when applied to God. If the word "good" means something entirely different when describing divine actions than when describing human actions, then saying "God is good" conveys no information about what God is actually like.18 The God who commanded the slaughter of children would be "good" by a standard that permits child-killing, which is not what most people mean by "good."
The interpretation that the events are not historical but literary does not fully resolve the problem. Even as literature, Numbers 31 presents a vision of God and divine justice. It tells readers that the God of Israel is the kind of being who commands the killing of children and the taking of virgins as war prizes. The narrative shapes moral imagination whether or not the events occurred.23
Numbers 31 remains in the canon, and those who take the Bible as scripture must reckon with what it says. The text does not apologize for or soften its content. It presents mass killing and the taking of captive virgins as God's will carried out by God's people. Readers are left to decide whether such a God deserves worship, whether the text requires reinterpretation, or whether the moral framework that produced it can be reconciled with contemporary ethical understanding.