Parashat Matos

In response to the “Dvar Ba’al Pe’or,” as it is termed in our parasha, Hashem commands Moshe Rabbeinu to annihilate Midyan. Moshe sends 12,000 warriors, led by Pinchas, and they succeed in killing every adult Midyanite male. But amidst the undertones of this genocide, we do see compassion and care for human life, for Pinchas spared every woman and child – even those women who had actively partaken in the Ma’aseh Pe’or.

Moshe Rabbeinu understandingly scolds Pinchas for his decision. The Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh explains that Pinchas spared these women – in spite of their promiscuous behavior – because of the overbearing pressure their fathers and husbands placed on them to act such. However, Moshe pointed out, these women voluntarily coerced the Jewish men into bowing down to their god, Ba’al Pe’or, and were therefore still worthy of punishment.

“For they themselves were to the Bnei Yisrael – during Bilam’s plot – [a cause] for treachery against Hashem in regard to the matter of Pe’or… and so now you must kill every male child, and each woman [capable of] knowing a man should be killed.”

BaMidbar 31:16-17

These pasukim provide plenty of support for the Ohr HaChaim’s proposal, but we are left with no good understanding as to why the male children should also be killed. To fill in the gaps, the Kli Yakar considers Klal Yisrael’s perspective of the transpiring matter. The nation would see Pinchas and his soldiers return with these captive women. Then, by Moshe’s command, they would execute them all. ‘Why didn’t they execute these women in the field?’ the people might wonder, and they would wrongfully conclude that the soldiers intended to take these women for illicit relationships and were therefore rebuked by Moshe. In order that the nation not cast such aspersions on these righteous soldiers, Moshe ordered them to first execute all the male children, for such action would make no sense had Moshe rebuked them for initiating in illicit relationships.

The Kli Yakar’s approach nicely completes the Ohr HaChaim’s aforementioned perspective, but it leaves us wondering what does and does not warrant murder and genocide. We often pair execution with punishment, as if it must be the consequence of some egregious crime. These Midyanite boys though were guilty of no apparent crime. They were too young to pressure their sisters into promiscuity. They were not present at the battlefield to coerce Jews to worship Pe’or. And if their idol worship at home were sufficient grounds for their woeful fate, then the same should have been true for the youngest Midyanite girls – who were indeed spared.

It seems that these young boys die for no justifiable reason. Rashi, though, subtly hints at a third offense the Midyanim committed:

Why did Pinchas go [to battle] and not Elazar… for he [also] went to avenge his ancestor Yoseif, as the pasuk states, “And the Midyanim sold [Yoseif to Mitzrayim].

Rashi, BaMidbar 31:6

Curiously, Rashi associates Pinchas to the annihilation of the Midyanite nation through a relatively minor occurrence some five centuries earlier. What significance does Yoseif’s sale altogether bear towards the fate of the entire Midyanite nation? In fact, if any nation were to be held responsible for Yoseif’s sale, we would first blame Yosief’s own brothers! We could also blame the Yishmaelim, who first purchased Yoseif and sold him to the Midyanim. What then is so special about the Midyanim’s role within the sale?

Perhaps we can reason that although various nations swapped Yoseif’s custody, they never sold him into outright slavery. They pawned him off as a bargaining chip within their trades, but they never fully demoted him to the lowest state of slavery and subjugation. The Midyanim, however, sold Yoseif to Mitzrayim as a slave for Potiphar, thereby fully striping Yoseif of whatever dignity he had yet retained.

In similar fashion, the Midyanite contemporaries of Pinchas forfeited their daughters and wives for the sake of licentiousness. Like their ancestors who sold Yoseif, they showed no reluctance towards the abasement of another human, even their own kin. Appropriately, Rashi notes, by annihilating the Midyanite nation and their heinous mindset, Pinchas also retaliates against the very motives that prompted Yoseif’s sale to Mitzrayim.

Perhaps then the Midyanites forfeiture of their own kin equally warranted the slaughter of their youngest male children. Just as they degraded their wives and daughters for a shameful purpose, so too Moshe gave Pinchas and his army full right to treat the Midyanite children with equally dehumanizing indifference, Midah K’Neged Midah. In this sense, the male Midyanite children died not for their own sins but rather for the sin of their parents.

One could even imagine Pinchas to have manipulated his situation in order to bring about this result. Had Pinchas killed the guilty Midyanite women before returning to the camp, Moshe would never have valid reason to order the deaths of the Midyanite children. But once the women return, Moshe is forced to kill the children too so as to repel the false aspersions of the Kahal, as the Kli Yakar explains. The children’s deaths cannot even be called martyrdom, for they are merely casualties of a much grander scheme, and dehumanized casualties at that, for their very right to life becomes a mere afterthought in the face of another man’s reputation. And what at first appears as compassion on the part of Pinchas transforms into exactly the opposite, an insensitivity rivaled only by the Midyanim who sold Yoseif to Mitzrayim.