Commentary on the Torah

by Richard Elliott Friedman

17So now, kill every male among the infants, and kill every woman who has known a man for male intercourse. 31:17. kill every woman … If Moses’ anger over the fact that they have not killed the women and children is difficult to accept, how much more amazing is the fact that the women in question are Midianite—like Moses’ wife! The command to attack the Midianites comes from God, and the text does not state what Moses’ personal reaction is. He must order a war against his wife’s people, with whom he once lived, whose priest was his father-in-law and adviser. He married a Midianite woman, but now he has all the other married Midianite women killed. The lack of any comment about Moses’ thoughts and feelings here is the most powerful silence since the story of the near-sacrifice of Isaac, in which we were told nothing of Abraham’s heart. The Torah’s way is to leave these things unspoken, and thus to leave us to ponder them. Remarkably, the fearful order to kill the women and children comes from Moses himself. The text does not say whether it originates from God. To conceive of Moses’ thoughts, perhaps we must go back to the point of the Midianite seductions at Baal Peor and start with the question of what Moses might feel when he learns that women of his wife’s people are seducing the Israelites into heresy: shock, embarrassment, betrayal, fury. What conversation can we imagine between Moses and Zipporah? What humiliation might Zipporah suffer from the Israelites in the after...