29. Midian and the 32 virgins
on Aug14 2019Jehovah, Moses, and the Israelites then begin a killing spree of mass proportions – by the sword, by fire, by the earth swallowing people up, by hanging, and (we suppose) by various other means. But this all pales against the slaughter of Midian, accomplished by 12,000 soldiers from the 12 tribes.
“And they warred against Midian, as Jehovah had commanded Moses, and killed every male. And the sons of Israel took the women of Midian captive, and their infants, and all their livestock, and all their possessions. And they plundered all their wealth.”
Not finished yet. Jehovah commands Moses to “kill every male among the infants; yea, you shall kill every woman having known a man by lying with a male.”
Which leaves, of course, only virgins, of which Moses evidently found 32,000.
This gives us a benchmark by which we might be able to approximate the population of Midian. I’m not smart enough to do that, but it obviously had to be in the many, many thousands. Midian was also evidently a rich city, yielding vast amounts of booty to the conquering Israelites: 675,000 sheep, 72,000 oxen, 61,000 asses, 32,000 virgins, plus tons of gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, and lead, including over 400 pounds of gold jewelry, which Moses “placed in the Lord’s sacred tent to remind Israel of what had happened.”
Moses then distributed all this booty among the tribes.
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