Parshat Matot: Revenge... anything but sweet

There are no words to explain the horrific tragedy that unfolded in Brooklyn last week, only questions. The positive side of the story is the outpouring of love, concern, and support that a community could exhibit for a child and for his family, in the aftermath of a conclusion no one could anticipate, expect, or face as being the reality.

In light of the story and how it has affected all of is, we can ask a particularly poignant question on a verse in the Torah that seems to go against everything we hold dear. The war against Midian was a one-time event, pursuant to a very specific nation of moral depravity who had waged a full-scale war against the Jewish people, sacrificing their daughters’ innocence, along with any moral fabric they may have possessed, in order to destroy the Israelites from within.

Their actions led directly to a plague in which 24,000 Israelites died. G-d’s instruction was to enact revenge against Midian. When the soldiers reported that they left the women alone, Moshe’s instruction to his soldiers follows: “And now, kill every [Midianite] male child and every woman who has lain with a man kill [as well]. The females who have never been with a man can be spared.” (Bamidbar 31:17-18)

Could G-d have truly dictated such a command? Was the Midianite crime so terrible that an all out war to kill even all the male children was necessary? This is neither the first or last time an entire nation was to be wiped out in the Torah. Amalek is the poster-nation for this concept in the Torah, and wars were waged or declared against them in Shmot 17 and Devarim 25:19, as well as in Shmuel I chapters 15 and 30. Similar rules were enforced in wars waged against the seven nations of the

land in Devarim 20:16. G-d did not spare the children in His destruction of Sodom and in the Flood. Questioning G-d’s decisions as to how He runs His world is silly. A G-d-fearing person recognizes that G-d may choose who will live and who will die.