The Pulpit Commentary — Numbers — Section 418

consid1:r for a moment> that on no other condition was the Old Testament di8pcnsation possible. If God was to be the Head of a nation nmong nations, he must l'egulate all its affairs, personal, social, and national. We escape the difficulty, and wnge wars of vengeance, and commit other acts of doubtful morality, without compromising our religion, because our religioa is strictly personal, and our wars are strictly national. But the Old Testament dispensation was emphatically temporal and national ; all responsibility for all public acts devolved upon the King of Israel himself. It wae absolutely necessary, then, either that God should reveal Christian morality without Christ (which is as though one should have heat without the sun, or a poem without n poet) ; or that he should sanction the morality then current in its best form, and teach men to "'alk bravely and devoutly according to the light of their own con- science. That light was dim enough ln some ways, but it wae slowly growing clearer through the gradual revelation which God made of himself; and even now it is growing clearer, and still while religion remains fundamentally the same, morality is distinctly advancing, and good people are learning to abhor to-day what they did in the faith and fear of God but yesterday, Take, e. g., that saying, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay." For the Jew it meant that in waging wars of vengeance he fought as the Lord's soldier and not as in a private quarrel, For the Christian of the present day it means that revenge of private injuries is to be left altogether to the just judgment of the last day. To the Christian of some future age it will mean that all revenge for injaries and hamiliations, private or public, individual or national, must be left to the justice of him who ordereth all things in this world or the world to come. Each has a different standard of morality; yet each, even in doing what another will abhor, may claim the Divine sanction, for each acts truly and religiously according to his lights. This being so, it is only necessary further to point out that the slaying of all the men whom they could get at was the ordinary custom of war in those days, when no distinction could be drawn between combatants e.nd non-combatants. The practice of war in this respect is entirely determined by the sentiment of the age, and is always in the nature of a compromise between the desire to kill and the desire to spare. As these two desires can never be reconciled, they dividG the field between them with a curious inconsistency. The first is satisfied by the ever-increasing destructiveness of war; the second is gratified by the alleviations which strict discipline and skilled assistance can procure for the vanquished and the wounded. Whether ancient or modern wam really left the larger tale of misery behind them is a matter of great doubt ; but at any rate the custom of war sanctioned the slaughter of all the combatants, i. e. of all the men, at that time; and if war is to be waged at all, it must be allowed to follow the ordinary practice. . In the second place, however, we have to deal witl1 horrors of an exceptional character, in the subsequent slaughter of the women and boys. Now it is to be observed that the orders for this slaughter proceeded from MoseA alone. According to the narrative of vers. 13 sq., Moses went out of the camp, and on perceiving the state of the case, gave instructions nt once while his anger was hot, It is possible that be sought for Divine guidance, but it does not ap1 ear tl at he did, but rather that he acted upon his own judgment, and under the ordinary guidance of his own •;onscience. We have not, therefore, to face the difficulty of a direct command from God, but only the difficulty of a holy man, full of heavenly wisdom, having ordered & butchery so abhorrent to our modern feelings. Let it then in all fairness be observed-1. That Moses was not responsible for the presence of these captives, They ought either to bve been kiUed, or left in their own Janel; it wae either the  <lB, XXXI. 1--54.] TltE BOOK OF NUMBERS.