וידבר ה׳…נקם נקמת בני ישראל G'd said:…"avenge the children of Israel, etc." If the purpose of the word לאמור in verse one was for Moses to tell these instructions to the people why did the Torah not write the plural form, i.e. נקמו נקמתכם instead of writing נקם נקמת? Yalkut Shimoni on our verse says that the word וידבר always refers to "tough talk." Moses began by appeasing G'd concerning his forthcoming death and G'd refused to be appeased in the matter. Moses said to G'd: "why should I die seeing I have witnessed so many miracles, etc.?" G'd was willing to meet Moses half-way saying: "if you want to live on for a number of years the Israelites will not live to see the defeat of their enemies during those years; neither will Midian be conquered by them. After Moses had allowed G'd to convince him that it was better he should die now, G'd in turn found it difficult to issue orders the fulfilment of which would be the cause of Moses' death. It is evident that the author of this Midrash appreciated the problem we have raised. According to his explanation the wording of our verse is justified. The word וידבר which expresses "tough talk," could refer to two kinds of harshness. 1) Moses and his forthcoming death; 2) G'd's feeling about the need to have Moses die and to have imposed this penalty upon him. The word לאמור is an allusion to the words of appeasement G'd had spoken to Moses when he wanted to convince him that his very death would be the greatest service he could render to his people at that time. Alternatively, the word לאמור may refer to everything Moses said to G'd trying to persuade Him not to let him die at this time. G'd's answer was: "avenge the children of Israel, etc."

Searching for the plain meaning of these words yields the following result. The reason G'd said to Moses וידבר, i.e. He spoke harshly was to tell him to act with authority when recruiting the soldiers for the campaign. The commandment to punish the Midianites was to be treated with the same degree of seriousness as any of the 613 commandments which were given to the people for all times. The word לאמור, as usual, means to tell the Israelites. In this instance this instruction was especially necessary because seeing that G'd appeared to have given this task to Moses personally by saying נקם instead of נקמו Moses might have thought that this commandment was addressed exclusively to him. This is not as strange as it sounds as Moses was a great hero physically, especially with G'd on his side. If we examine deeds of valour performed by Yonathan son of King Saul and recorded in Samuel I chapter 14, it should not surprise us if G'd had indeed told Moses to avenge the Israelites single- handedly. The reason G'd used the singular although He meant for the Israelites to participate in the campaign is that Moses' approaching death depended on the completion of this campaign first i.e. אחר תאסף לעמך. In view of the fact that this campaign and its timing determined when Moses would die, it was quite in order for the Torah to describe this as primarily Moses' campaign. By choosing to give orders for this campaign to be conducted without delay, Moses displayed his מסירת נפש, self-sacrifice, in order to carry out G'd's instructions. We will offer yet another interpretation of this verse.

נקם נקמת, "avenge the Israelites, etc." The plain meaning of the verse is that G'd delegated Moses to carry out this task. How is it possible then that he did not even accompany the soldiers into battle? Although I have explained previously that the vengeance Moses took consisted of telling the people to launch this campaign, the plain meaning of the verse cannot be ignored. Who allowed Moses to send Pinchas instead when G'd had told him to take vengeance? Furthermore, why did the Torah make Moses' death depended on the completion of this punitive expedition?

The command: "take vengeance" is capable of two interpretations. 1) Moses was to prepare the campaign logistically and make all the preparations to ensure it would be militarily successful; 2) the actual battle which is the act of revenge. Moses understood correctly that what G'd wanted him to do was to prepare the groundwork to insure that the campaign would be successful. Moses reasoned that since G'd had not said to him הלחם במדין, "go into battle against Midian" -which would have been an unmistakable command- that what G'd wanted him to do was to plan the strategy. Moses also realised that he had to proceed with great astuteness as after all, in their previous encounter with the women of Midian the Israelites had become embroiled in the sin of גלוי עריות, some of them actively others only in their fantasies. While it was true that G'd had killed a substantial number of the active participants in that sin by the plague whereas others had been miraculously saved by Pinchas' deed, the accuser would certainly be at hand when the Israelites who had been steeped in sin were going to attack these people claiming moral superiority as their justification to kill all the male Midianites. It stood to reason that the Israelites were going to suffer a great number of casualties in such a campaign. There is some comparison here to the sin of the golden calf which resulted in Aaron being forbidden to enter the Holy of Holies in gold-trimmed garments so as not to endanger himself through arousing Satan and the attribute of Justice by reminding G'd of that sin (compare Rosh Hashanah 27). According to Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer chapter 4, G'd also commanded the angels described in Isaiah's vision (Isaiah 6,2) to cover their feet with their wings in order that G'd should not be reminded of the sin of the golden calf as the feet of these angels were like those of calves. If this was so during normal times, in times of war the chances are even greater that the "accusers" will remind G'd of sins the Israelites had committed in order to cause their deaths in battle. Sotah 44 affords us an insight into the types of relatively minor sins that are capable of causing a soldier going to war to become a casualty. If someone was aware that he had engaged in conversation between putting on the phylacteries on the arm and the phylacteries on the head, he was sent home before the army joined the enemy in battle so that he would not become a casualty on account of that sin. All the Israelites who had been guilty of entertaining sexual fantasies involving the Moabite or Midianite women were not fit to be part of the punitive expedition as they would have exposed themselves to Satan and his forces at such a time. Clearly, when G'd told Moses to exact vengeance from the Midianites, He expected Moses to have such considerations in mind.

The Torah continues ואחר תאסף אל עמיך. It would appear that until the campaign had been successfully completed Moses could not die peacefully as his people had not been rehabilitated. It would not do for Moses to leave behind his people in need of spiritual rehabilitation. His soul would not be able to face the hereafter with peace of mind. According to the Kabbalists the place one occupies in the hereafter while awaiting final judgment is called עמיו, "his people." G'd examines every single one of our sins during that judgment. We know all this from Psalms 50,3 וסביביו נשערה מאד, "around Him it stormed fiercely." The cause that would prevent Moses from occupying this place called עמיו was the affair of Zimri ben Salu which had found Moses paralysed, inactive, as described by Bamidbar Rabbah 20,24. Moses' hands were weakened by Zimri's challenge to him. [Zimri had asked Moses why he could not sleep with a Midianite woman seeing that Moses himself had married a Midianite woman. Ed.] G'd was angry that Moses had not avenged Him until Pinchas had done so. As a result, G'd told Moses that he could not die peacefully until he had rehabilitated himself by organising the punitive expedition against Midian. Once Moses had taken care of this assignment he would be able to die without the need to face an accuser after his death. This was one of the great acts of kindness G'd performed for Moses.

מאת המדינים. "from the Midianites." Why did the Torah write the word מאת instead of merely writing מהמדינים? Perhaps the Torah wanted to hint at an ex Midianite who was in his birthplace at that time, i.e. Bileam. As a result of Bileam's being in the land of Midian at the time of this expedition the Israelites killed him by the sword (compare 31,8). Perhaps the reason G'd was in a hurry for this campaign to be launched was precisely because He was aware that Bileam was in that land at that time. Sanhedrin 106 tells us that the reason Bileam had travelled to Midian which was a long way from his home in Petorah was in order to collect his reward for having given the advice to seduce the Israelites as a result of which 24.000 of them died. G'd prepared a net for him to fall into when He ordered this campaign at that time.

וידבר משה…החלצו מאתכם, Moses said.. "mobilise from amongst you, etc." The word לאמור in this verse is puzzling. To whom were the people supposed to relay what Moses told them? Furthermore, why did Moses use the expression החלצו instead of the formulation Moses used in Exodus 17,9 when he said to Joshua: בחר לנו אנשים, "choose some men for us, etc.?" Why did he not order Pinchas to do what he had ordered Joshua to do at that time instead of addressing his command to the people at large? Another peculiarity in this verse are the words ויהיו על מדין "so that they will be against Midian." Moses should have said: "so that they will do battle against Midian." Moreover, why did Moses change G'd's instructions? G'd had told Moses נקם נקמת בני ישראל, "avenge the vengeance of the Israelites," whereas Moses told the people to exact "G'd's vengeance," i.e. לתת נקמת השם? Besides, why did Moses not send a large army but selected only 1.000 men per tribe? Who had given him authority to send such a small force of soldiers against a numerically far superior people [governed by 5 kings Ed.]? When you consider that 32.000 girls who were still virgins were left you can arrive at some idea how many there must have been originally.

However, as we already mentioned in our introduction, this expedition was based on the attackers' moral superiority over its adversaries as evidenced by G'd's instruction to "avenge." Moses had to mobilise the kind of soldiers whose fantasies had not run wild at the time of the debacle in Shittim. How was he to know which one of the Israelites had indulged in sinful thoughts at the time? Moses therefore advised each man of military age to examine himself in this matter. This is the meaning of החלצו מאתכם, "separate yourselves from your own selves," i.e. examine your conscience if you are morally fit to take part in such a punitive expedition of the morally superior against the morally inferior. Only those who knew that they could qualify under this heading would be considered for the contingent of 1.000 per tribe. The word לאמור is a hint that these people should all "speak to their inner selves on this subject." Perhaps the very word לאמור was even an allusion to the sin of גלוי עריות as we find in Sanhedrin 56 "the word לאמור refers to illicit sex." According to Midrash Tanchuma on our verse these men were all righteous. Although we have explained elsewhere that one can only derive such a conclusion from the word אנשים when this word is superfluous in the text, in our instance there is independent support for the theory that the אנשים mentioned here had to be righteous men. Seeing this was so they had no reason to worry although they would be far outnumbered by the Midianites. Moreover, they were not only righteous but they qualified for the appellation חסידים, "pious," because they had been confronted with a powerful temptation and had conquered it. Zohar Chadash volume 3 page 195 states that this is the basis for someone being described as pious. This then explains Moses' considerations as to whom to select and how many to select.

ויהיו על מדין, "and they will be against Midian." We can best explain this expression by reverting to a statement of the Kabbalists that sanctity is the mystical foundation of spiritual ascent, whereas the קליפה, the source of negative spiritual forces are the mystical foundation of spiritual descent of a human being. Once a person commits a sin, part of the קליפה, attaches itself to him and becomes part of his nature causing him to become degraded. We have explained this already at the beginning of Parshat Ki Tissa in connection with Exodus 30,12 (my translation page 814). The words על מדין then mean that these pious soldiers should be able to be "above Midian," i.e. be spiritually superior. None of the forces of impurity which cling to the Midianites would cling to these soldiers.

לתת נקמת השם, "to execute G'd's vengeance." This too was part of Moses' astuteness, his endeavour to achieve the objective of avenging the sin the Midianites had caused the Jewish people to commit. Moses commanded these soldiers that their motivation should be to avenge a wrong done to G'd whose commandments the Midianites had caused the Jewish people to violate and neglect. Their vengeance should not focus on the fact that the Midianites had caused the death of so many Israelites. If that were to be their motivation in going to war against the Midianites this would not be a מצוה which would help them succeed in this campaign without sustaining casualties. It is true that G'd Himself had told Moses that the Israelites were to avenge what the Midianites had done to them. However, the Torah does not say that G'd told Moses to convey this thought to the Israelites. In G'd's conversation with Moses He left it to Moses to figure out the best way to achieve the result G'd had in mind.

Our verse may also be understood thus: There would be no need for these soldiers to actually fight a battle; all they had to do was to be there physically. G'd would do the fighting on their behalf. The reason was לתת נקמת השם, it was to be a vengeance which G'd exacted from Midian. The situation was similar to Exodus 14,14 when Moses told the people not to worry, but that G'd would fight the Egyptians on their behalf.

וימסרו מאלפי ישראל אלף למטה, One thousand men per tribe were handed over from amongst the many thousands of Israelites, etc. This means that everyone who was certain that he fulfilled the qualifications needed volunteered to be part of the thousand men from his tribe. Once the number 1.000 in that tribe had been reached no further volunteers were asked for. Moses deliberately limited the number in each tribe to one thousand so as not to create a situation which would be embarassing, such as when one tribe would field many more volunteers than another.

וישלח אותם ואת פנחס, Moses sent them…together with Pinchas, etc. The reason the Torah wrote the word וישלח, "he sent them," was to make the soldiers participating in this campaign into שלוחי מצוה, delegates charged with the performance of a sacred duty, a מצוה. We have the rule that delegates on a מצוה-mission are safe from harm while performing their task. The verse repeats the word אתם to tell us that the presence of Pinchas with these twelve thousand pious soldiers doubled their effectiveness; Pinchas was equivalent in piety to all the other 12.000 soldiers combined.

The fact that Moses selected Pinchas instead of Joshua to be the leader of this expedition was also an astute move by Moses. Pinchas had already demonstrated jealousy on behalf of G'd. Who could have served as better inspiration for the task at hand than Pinchas? He radiated more destructive power against negative spiritual forces than did Joshua. It is also possible that Moses was afraid of the people who would assail these soldiers wanting to know that if they considered themselves as so pious why had they not protested the involvement of their brethren in the harlotry and thus helped prevent such sins from being perpetrated? To head off such criticism Moses sent along Pinchas who had risked his life in order to bring this harlotry to a stop. Perhaps this is what the Torah alluded to with the unusual construction אתם ואת פנחס, "they together with Pinchas." Moses hoped that by his presence Pinchas would supply the missing factor, i.e. the preparedness for self sacrifice in order to stop others from sinning, something which even the pious soldiers had not contributed at the time of the debacle at Shittim. It is possible that G'd already originally intended that only someone of the calibre of Pinchas could wipe out the shameful stain which would remain on Israel's character if the Midianites were allowed "to get away" with what they had done. G'd was grateful to Moses' choice of Pinchas as the leader of this expedition. G'd Himself had not wanted to direct Moses to appoint Pinchas in charge of this expedition fearing that such a directive might have made Moses think that he himself was not qualified to lead this punitive campaign. The result of G'd's astuteness was that His desire was carried out without Moses becoming embarassed in the process.

ואת מלכי..חמשת מלכי מדין, "and the kings of Midian….-the five kings of Midian." The reason that the Torah spelled out their number (i.e. 5), something we had already counted ourselves, was to tell us that they were all killed next to one another so that all the soldiers could count the bodies of these five kings whom they had slain. The reason why the Torah repeats that they were kings may have been to tell us that they were killed by soldiers who knew full well that these five men were kings. They were not the victims of random killings.

הרגו בחרב, they killed by the sword. The Torah had to write the word הרגו, "they killed" once more when describing the manner of Bileam's death though we gleaned his information already from the context (end of verse 7). The reason is best understood when we read Sifri where it is stated that Bileam had gone there to collect his fee for the diabolical advice he had given Balak with such stunning results. According to Sifri, at that moment Bileam was on the way to advise the Israelites not to make war against Midian saying to them that if they had been unable to overcome Midian when the were able to field 600.000 fighting men, now that they numbered fewer they would certainly not be able to do so. According to the Sifri that the Israelites killed Bileam as a response to his effrontery, he was killed before the battle against the Midianites had taken place. This was all part of G'd's clever plot. He wanted to demonstrate that Bileam did not die because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but that He, G'd, had arranged things so that the Israelites would have an excuse to single him out for killing. Had the Torah not repeated the word הרגו unnecessarily, we would not have been able to deduce this from the text. The emphasis on the word בחרב, "by the sword," is to show that all his sorcery did not help Bileam and instead of their "killing" only his alter ego they killed his body.

הן הנה….בדבר בלעם, "these are the very ones…in the affair with Bileam, etc." We must try and understand what Moses meant when he referred to "these are the very ones, etc." Besides, why was Moses so long-winded in his reference to Bileam and (subsequently) to פעור. The matter will become clear once we understand why both Pinchas and the pious people who had gone with him committed such an error.

Pinchas and his colleagues reasoned that the women who had played temptresses at the time had acted under duress, only carrying out their husbands' orders. Unmarried girls were similarly under duress having been ordered by their fathers to do whatever they had done to seduce the Israelites. Accordingly, Pinchas did not think that these women were guilty of death. Moses appreciated the considerations which had prompted Pinchas and his soldiers. This is why he pointed out that Pinchas and his colleagues would have been correct if the only thing these women had been guilty of was to cause the Israelites to indulge in illicit sex. However, in addition to their carrying out their husbands' and their fathers' orders respectively, they had committed another sin, one which they committed out of their own free will, namely that of Peor, i.e. getting the Israelites to worship that deity. According to Bamidbar Rabbah 20,23 these women prevailed on the Israelites to perform acts of obeisance to the image of Peor before letting them indulge their carnal desires. For this sin they were guilty of death, and this is what Moses referred to when he said הן הנה, i.e. they themselves (without outside pressure) initiated this part of the seduction. בדבר בלעם, at the instigation of Bileam, i.e. through the advice of Bileam to have the women offer themselves as sexual partners to the Israelites. If you examine the writings of our sages on the subject you will find that they attribute to Bileam only the advice that the Israelites be seduced sexually. Bileam never said that these women were to seduce the Israelites to worship or appear to worship any idols. By refusing to sleep with the Israelites unless the latter had first performed an act of idolatry, these women were guilty of the מעל בשם, the trespass against the Eternal G'd which our verse speaks about.

ועתה הרגו….הרוגו. "and now kill!…..kill." Why did the Torah have to repeat the command to kill separately for young male Midianites and for females who were no longer virgins? Sifri quotes Rabbi Yishmael as saying that the second הרוגו was necessary to separate this verse from the following verse. Had the Torah not written this word in between I would have understood the words וכל אשה in our verse as capable of referring either to what is written in verse 18 or to what is written in our verse. This seems problematical. If Rabbi Yishmael were correct, why did the Torah not interpose a statement such as החיו לכם, "keep alive for yourselves," as it did at the end of verse 18? If the Torah had done this there would have been no need to write the word הרוגו twice! Perhaps the Torah was afraid to write החיו לכם at this juncture as it would have appeared then that Moses commanded the Israelites to keep these Midianite virgins alive. Actually, Moses only gave permission to keep them alive. This is why the words וכל הטף introduced verse 18 to inform the Israelites of the status of these survivors, not to order them to keep these people alive.

We also need to understand the word הרגו at the beginning of verse 17. Why did the Torah not content itself with the word הרוגו at the end of this verse? Perhaps the Torah wanted to write the words ועתה הרגו together to teach the people that the rehabilitation of the nation which had been the objective of the whole campaign could not be achieved until the people mentioned in our verse had been killed. The sooner this would be accomplished, i.e. ועתה, "now," the sooner would the Israelites be completely rehabilitated concerning the sin at Shittim. Alternatively, the Torah may have wanted to write together the words הרגו לטף on the one hand and הרוגו לאשה, to indicate that we are dealing with two separate commandments. Or, the words simply allude to the fact that these people should be executed forthwith, i.e. ועתה.

החיו לכם, "keep alive for yourselves." The meaning is that those who were allowed to live should convert to Judaism and only when they were Jewish would they qualify for the description חיים, "to be alive," as then they would be allowed to get married and to remain "alive" by means of the children they would bear.

-43. ויהי המלקח, "The prey amounted to, etc." The lengthy description and the repetitive numbers in this whole sequence need analysis. Who amongst us cannot figure out what half of a total of 675.000 sheep amounts to? We can also figure out for ourselves what the מכס, the 2 pro mil tax given to the Temple-Treasury amounted to. Nachmanides wrote that the Torah wanted to inform us that not one of these animals had died since its capture until the distribution of the prey. I do not agree that the fact that the flocks did not diminish in the brief interval since the battle was something miraculous, at least not to the extent that we have to read about it every year, 3.700 years later.

I believe that the reason that the Torah tells us what half the total of these flocks amounted to was to teach us that the calculation of the tax was based on the 500th animal being the tax rather than the 501st. This is the reason the Torah had to repeat this calculation in each instance. In other words, the tax amounted to one in 499 and not as we might have thought one in 500.

The reason the Torah had to tell us how much the half which constitued the congregation's share consisted of was to prevent us from making another mistake. Unless the Torah had written matters as it did, we would have concluded that the tax was taken off the top before there was any division of the prey between the soldiers on the one hand and the people on the other hand. In view of the numbers recorded here it becomes clear that the soldiers paid their part of the tax from their collective share of the prey whereas the people paid their part from the total allocated to them as their share. The fact that the Torah only lists half of the total when describing the share of the people proves that the people and the soldiers each paid the tax separately from their respective shares; otherwise the people could not have received 36.000 heads of cattle, for instance.

-50. ויאמרו אל משה…ונקרב, They said to Moses:…"we have brought the Lord's offering, etc." The meaning of the soldiers saying that after counting who had returned from the battle it became clear that they had not suffered a single casualty was designed to convince Moses that not one of these soldiers who had volunteered had previously been guilty of any sin even remotely connected to the parts of the body on which these pieces of jewelry were worn , and which they had offered as atonement offerings for themselves. The expression ונקרב alluded to הרהורי עברה, fantasies about committing a sin. The purpose of the sacrifice was to atone for any such fantasies one had entertained (compare Shabbat 64). I have elaborated on this theme in my booklet called חפץ השם (on a variety of Talmudical subjects)

כל כלי מעשה, "all kinds of wrought articles." We get an idea of the quantity and variety of the loot the Israelites captured from the Midianites if these wrought articles alone amounted to 16,750 shekels. The Torah (verse 53) adds: "each man looted for himself" after the Torah had already told us previously that the soldiers had looted for themselves. Why did the Torah mention this fact again in this context? Apparently the Torah wanted to tell us that this was the sum total of all the golden pieces which the commanders had captured, exclusive of what the common soldiers had captured which had been mentioned previously. Altogether, great riches had been found and captured.

אל אהל מועד זכרון לבני ישראל, to the Tent of Meeting as a memorial for the children of Israel, etc. Why did the Torah use the unusual way of separating the words "Tent of Meeting" and "before G'd" by interposing the words "as a memorial for the children of Israel?" These words should have appeared at the end of the verse! We may be able to understand our verse with the help of a statement in Massechet Kallah. Said Rabbi Achai bar Yoshiah: "anyone who turns away from a sin that he was about to commit becomes as fit as the High Priest to offer a sacrifice on the altar even if he is not a priest." Thus far the relevant statement of Rabbi Achai. The pieces of jewelry offered by the commanders of the punitive expedition in our verse as sacrifices were all in the nature of offerings after the owners had spurned the commission of sins which they were about to commit. The jewelry had been taken literally from the persons with whom the sin in question would have been committed. Our sages commented on Song of Songs, 6,6: "your teeth are like a flock of ewes," that during the war in question the Israelite soldiers removed the Midianite women's personal jewelry, smeared some kind of plaster and dung on their faces, took off their nose-rings so that they would not be tempted to look at them and to lust after them. This is what the Torah had in mind with the words לבני ישראל followed by the words לפני השם. The soldiers in question had elevated themselves to a spiritual level equivalent to the priests who offer the sacrifices before G'd in the Tabernacle. Their conduct became a memorial for future generations of Israelites.