Moses meets them outside the camp and is angry they spared the women. The text gives his reason: those women caused Israel to break faith at Peor, and that is what brought the plague. So he orders what 31:17-18 says.
The boys are not killed for something they did at Peor. In that world, sons grow up to avenge their fathers and carry the tribe forward. If the male children live, Midian can rebuild as the same hostile people and come back at Israel later. Killing them ends that line. The women who have already been with a man are treated as the group that ran the Peor plan. Moses says they are the ones who, on Balaam’s advice, led Israel into the breach. That is why they are not kept with the rest of the captives. In a normal distant-city war, Deuteronomy 20 lets Israel spare the women after the men are killed. Midian is handled more strictly because the women were the weapon.
The girls who have not known a man are spared because they were not part of that scheme. Their towns are already burned, so they have no people left to return to. They are taken into Israel instead.
There were 32,000 of those girls. They are counted with the spoil, split between the soldiers and the congregation, with a tribute portion going to the priests and Levites. “Keep them for yourselves” is not an open license. Wars outside the Canaanite ban already had rules. Deuteronomy 21:10-14 says that if a man wants a captive woman as a wife, he brings her home, she shaves her head, trims her nails, puts off captive clothes, and mourns her father and mother a full month. Only then may he marry her. If he later does not want her, he lets her go free. He may not sell her or treat her as a slave.
Numbers 31 also requires the soldiers and the captives to stay outside the camp seven days and purify on the third and seventh day. Younger girls not of marriage age would have entered households as dependents.
The passage is judgment on the Midianite group that used Balaam’s plan (idolatry and sex) against Israel, then folds the uninvolved girls into Israel under existing captive law. That is the reasoning the text itself gives.
Understandable. This passage can be difficult, but the reasoning for it is found a few chapters before in Numbers 25.
In Numbers 25, Israel is camped at Shittim after beating Sihon and Og, and Moab and Midian are afraid as a result of that victory. Balak, the king of Moab, hires Balaam to curse Israel. Not only does that fail, but God makes Balaam bless them instead. So Balaam gives another plan: do not curse them from the outside, get them to break covenant from the inside, and use the women to do it. Numbers 31:16 says the Midianite women followed that advice, and Revelation 2:14 says the same thing — Balaam taught Balak to put a stumbling block in front of Israel through sexual immorality and food sacrificed to idols.
That is what happens at Peor. Israelite men sleep with Moabite and Midianite women, the women invite them to their gods’ sacrifices, and the men eat and bow down. Israel yokes itself to Baal of Peor. Baal worship there was a fertility cult, so the sex and the altar were the same package.
The Lord’s anger burns against Israel for that, and a plague hits the camp. It was not an illness caused by the sex itself. It was God’s judgment on Israel for joining Baal through the sex and the worship. While the plague is still going, Zimri, a Simeonite leader, brings Cozbi, the daughter of a Midianite chief, into the camp in full view of the congregation. Phinehas follows them into the tent and kills both of them with a spear, and the plague stops. 24,000 Israelites are already dead.
In chapter 31, twelve thousand men go out, kill the Midianite males they fight, kill the five kings and Balaam, burn the settlements, and bring back the women, children, and livestock.
“Does that somehow invalidate this?”
Yes, in the same way that requiring a mental health evaluation before you’re allowed to buy lighter fluid doesn’t stop arsonists.
You’re assuming the people unstable or determined enough to plan a mass shooting will politely sit for a psych eval, fail it, and then just… give up. In reality, the ones actually willing to murder dozens of strangers are the least likely to submit to (or pass) that evaluation, and the most likely to simply get a gun illegally.
So what you’re really proposing is a filter that only the non-crazy, law-abiding people will ever walk through. That’s not mitigation. That’s theatre.
@SilkOCE@Battlefield All l've ever wanted since launch is wider FOV for jets and instant rear cam which has been in every iteration of BF going back to BF4...lt's practically a core feature at this point ant it's still not in the game.
@HiebDE All I’ve ever wanted since launch is wider FOV for jets and instant rear cam which has been in every iteration of BF going back to BF4…It’s practically a core feature at this point ant it’s still not in the game.
The spawn beacon is easily the most underrated and powerful class gadget in the game.
Its usefulness, of course, requires two things:
1. an Assault player on your squad who isn’t a self-absorbed douchebag, and
2. squadmates who aren’t braindead enough to spend the majority of the match staring at a bush or camping the back of the map.
Also the ladder is super useful in the right hands, and should be the class gadget over the useless epi-pen.
@balloftroy@statesman@GovHotWheels_TX Mental health professionals wouldn’t not have prevented this as weapons, especially firearms related mental health calls are an explicit disqualifier for alternative/unarmed response “CAHOOTS” style mental health/crisis teams to respond.
As a Christian I respect you for asking this openly as a Muslim. The consequences for asking such a critical question to members of your faith is no small matter. God bless you for your courage. In the name of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, I pray the Lord heap blessings on you and your family.
To address your question, brother: according to the Qur’an, the major classical commentaries (Ibn Kathir, al-Tabari, al-Qurtubi), and the consensus of the four Sunni madhhabs, the answer is not ambiguous.
As you know, Islam means submission and that submission is not presented as optional for the world. The classical position is that the ultimate goal is for the religion of Allah to be made dominant. People of the Book (Jews and Christians) are given a specific option under Quran 9:29: they may keep their religion if they pay the jizya “with willing submission and feel themselves subdued” (wa-hum ṣāghirūn). Ibn Kathir explains this as living in a state of humiliation and belittlement so they do not rise above Muslims. The Pact of ʿUmar and later fiqh codified the practical rules: no new churches, no public evangelism or religious display, distinctive clothing, yielding the road to Muslims, restricted testimony, etc. They are protected dhimmīs, not equal citizens, while everyone else faces a different choice.
Apostasy from Islam is punishable by death according to the explicit hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari (“Whoever changes his religion, kill him”) and the near-unanimous view of the classical schools. “There is no compulsion in religion” (2:256) was never understood by the major early scholars as granting a permanent right to leave Islam or to practice any faith with full equality under Muslim rule.
This framework has been the orthodox position for roughly 1,400 years, from the time of the early conquests onward. Modern reformers exist, but they are revising the classical sources, not recovering them.
That is why the demand for unrestricted religious freedom in non-Muslim countries, while many Muslim-majority countries restrict churches, criminalize evangelism, and punish converts, creates the contradiction you noticed. Classical Islamic law does not treat religious freedom as a reciprocal right; it treats the supremacy of Islam as the normative order.
The skin you’re using is wearing two diffetent underwater diving systems at the same time. Once system (the one on the chest) is a closed circuit bubbleless system used for clandestine special operation and the other is an open circuit system that makes bubbles and is used for non-tactical, recreational or salvage operations.
@Ihunanya_chi But doesn’t Islam teach the Bible is corrupted? Why trust the parts that confirm your bias, yet reject those that challenge it…especially when the historical parts you’re citing are only contained within the Bible?
They imbalanced the class when they gave it the ability to carry 5 rockets and 50 mines at one time.
They should have made it so the max carried RPG limit is always 3 but slowed the reload time way down and made it so you had to hit a resupply bag to get more. And the mines should have been limited to 2 max, but could be stacked in order to 1 shot tanks.
For the RPGs they should have kept it at 2 square on rear shots to kill a tank, 3 square on the sides and square on frontal shots should take all 3 plus damage from other sources to kill a full health MBT.