Parashat Matot - Second Aliyah

Almost the end of the road. Moses hears from God: the next mission is also the last. “nekom nikmat bnei Yisra’el me’et hamidyanim achar te’asef el amecha” (Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites; afterward you shall be gathered to your people, Numbers 31:2). This is not a war like all other wars. It is a war of mission. The vengeance of God, against those who harmed the people not only in body but in soul.

Moses commands to send a thousand fighters from each tribe, twelve thousand soldiers, to the war against Midian. At their head goes Pinchas son of Elazar the priest, with the sacred vessels and the trumpets for sounding. The priest, the emissary of holiness, leads the army of Israel not only by the power of weapons but also by the power of the spirit.

The campaign ends in total victory. All the males are killed, including the five kings of Midian, and also Balaam son of Beor, the same Balaam who tried to curse and ended up blessing, yet in the end advised how to lead Israel into sin. His punishment comes becharev (by the sword).

The children of Israel take great spoil: women and children, livestock and cattle, and all their wealth. The cities and palaces are burned with fire. And everything is brought to Moses and to Elazar, to the plains of Moab, by the Jordan at Jericho.

Rashi (Numbers 31:3) highlights the change of language in Moses’ words: God said “nikmat bnei Yisra’el” (the vengeance of the children of Israel), while Moses says to the people “nikmat Adonai” (the vengeance of Adonai). And so Rashi explains: “one who stands against Israel is as if he stands against the Holy One, blessed be He”. The Sifrei (Bamidbar 157) expands the idea: this vengeance is not the vengeance of flesh and blood, but the vengeance of “the One who spoke and the world came into being”.

There is a deep insight here: the enemies who saw in Israel a body discovered they were fighting a spirit. When the children of Israel go in the name of God, the struggle is not merely political or military; it is the repair of a moral and spiritual wrong.

The wars of the spirit in our days are not fought with a sword, but they demand the same courage: to stand for the sanctity of values, for the boundaries between truth and falsehood, for the purity of the inner camp. And sometimes the hardest war is waged within ourselves, against the little Balaam inside us. Not out of anger but out of mission, not out of vengeance but out of clarity.