8. The extermination of the Midianites
The Book of Numbers recounts the Israelites’ destruction of the Midianites, a people descended from Abraham which were considered enemies by Moses, and who followed the false prophet Balaam. Moses gathered, according to Numbers, twelve thousand Israelite warriors and “they warred against the Midianites; and they slew all the males”. Still, Moses was unsatisfied with the simple killing of all the Midianite men, the number of which were slain not being recounted in the book. Five Midianite kings were among the casualties, “…namely, Evi, and Rekem, and Zur, and Hur, and Reba, five kings of Midian”. The women, children, and their possessions and livestock were taken captive back to Moses and their homes burned.
Moses was not satisfied, and considering that jealousy over women was the cause of the enmity between Midianite and Israelite, he ordered that they “kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that hath not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves”. The bible states that 32,000 Midianite virgins of all ages were thus kept alive as slaves for the Israelites. How many men, women, and male children were thus murdered by the Israelites under Moses’ command can only be estimated by the number of females left alive. The genocide was incomplete however, as Midianites appear in the chronologically later events in Judges.