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Come and study the Holy Scriptures with us as Fr. Stephen DeYoung teaches verse-by-verse on the podcast The Whole Counsel of God. Fr. Stephen holds a Ph.D. in Biblical Studies and is an Orthodox priest serving at Archangel Gabriel Orthodox Church in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Okay, we'll go ahead and get started. When we get started here, in just a moment, we're picking up at the beginning of the Book of Numbers, Chapter 31. So, by way, a very quick review, because we're in the endgame of the Book of Numbers. Which means, actually, as we mentioned before, we're kind of in the endgame of the Torah, at least as a narrative. because the book of deuteronomy there's little bits of narrative at the beginning and end but most of the book of deuteronomy is a sermon given by moses so in terms of the the narrative of the torah that began at the beginning of exodus where we talked about the enslavement of the israelites and the birth of moses that narrative runs to the death of moses at the end of deuteronomy we already saw a few chapters ago God telling Moses okay it's time to go up on this mountain and then you're going to die that's how close we are narrative wise right to the end of the narrative we're basically at the end of the narrative so Israel has not only come out of Egypt not only traveled to the land of Canaan but then circled around for 40 years while a generation died off. We've read the second census at the end of that 40 years already. I know those of you who missed it here are thoroughly disappointed at having missed me reading census data again. And now we're sort of in these sort of concluding bits. So we're on the plains of Moab. We're on the other side of the Jordan from Canaan. Israel's getting ready to enter. That's why we had the census. Last time we talked about Moses making a few rulings out a few things related to land inheritance because we're getting ready to once the land is taken to divide it up among the tribes and the clans and the families right all of this is we're all building up to the book of joshua actually but so that's everything going on we're sort of tying up the loose ends right before the end of the torah these last few chapters and so we've been getting kind of random different things we got census data we got someone who only had daughters and not sons asking questions about inheritance you know we've gotten all these different things and so as we start here in chapter 31 we're going to be tying up another loose end uh that being hey remember Balaam and Balak and that whole thing at Baal Peor where he led Israel right we haven't we haven't exactly dealt with Bala or Balak yet have we well here's a loose We said we're about to tie up. So that's where we're going here in Numbers chapter 31 as we begin.

So unless there are any leftover comments, questions, disturbing pizza recipes that anyone would like to share, we'll go ahead and pick up in Numbers chapter 31, verse 1. Now the Lord spoke to Moses saying, Exact vengeance from the Midianites for the children of Israel. Afterward, you shall be added to your people. So we still have this reminder. Moses, you're about to die. But here's one more thing to take care of real quick, right before we take care of that. And that's dealing with the Midianites. So Moses spoke to the people saying, Arm some of your men to stand in battle array before the Lord against Midian, to repay vengeance for the Lord on Midian. from all the tribes of Israel you shall send a thousand from each tribe to stand in battle army okay so this is we need 12,000 people where every time there's not a standing army you call people up so they're not calling up every able-bodied man but a thousand from each tribe now the Levites are not a tribe for this purpose because they don't fight in battle but remember Joseph had two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, right? And so each of them is going to send 1,000, and that's how you get 12,000 without the Levites participating. So from the thousands of Israel, they counted 1,000 from each tribe, 12,000 armed for the battle line, okay? Now notice they say from the thousands of Israel. Remember, we talked about the word for thousands is just sort of big number. So from the big mass right of israel they took a big group from each right

Then Moses sent them a thousand from each tribe with their army, and Phinehas, the son of Eliezer the priest, with the holy vessels and the trumpets for signaling in his hands. Okay, so Phinehas isn't the high priest yet. His father Eliezer is. Remember, Eliezer is the eldest surviving son of Aaron, who is the current high priest. Remember, Phinehas is the one who stopped the plague at Baal Peor, right? Baal Peor, that was caused by, oh, we'll just go ahead and say it, caused by the Midianites, right? The Midianites are the ones who sent the women, right? The Midianites were the ones who were officiating at Baal Peor. They were Midianites, not Moabites, ethnically. So that's why we're after the Midianites. But yeah, this is also why Phineas in particular is the one who they say, the holy vessels they're talking about is like the Ark of the Covenant, right? So they're taking the Ark of the Covenant because God is leading them into battle. and the hordes were signaling as literally like the ram's horns that they blew into to signal attack, retreat. So they arrayed themselves in battle against Midian, as the Lord commanded Moses, and they killed every male. They killed the kings of Midian, together with their slain people, Evi, Zer, Recham, Hur, and Reba, which is apparently a boy's name if you're a Midianite, the five kings of Midian. They also killed Balaam, the son of Baor, with the sword, along with their slain people. So they caught him too. Now, it says they slayed all the men, right? I know a lot of people, modern people, are like, oh, that means they went into the camp and they slaughtered every single male Midianite who existed. No, they're saying slayed all the men as in the men who went out into battle, like the opposing army, right? They didn't go and find like elderly men and male babies and that's not right. It's the people who went into battle against them, who they defeated. They also took as plunder the women of Midian with their households, their cattle, all their possessions, and they plundered their army. They also set on fire all the cities where they dwelt and all their unwalled villages. They took as well all their booty and spoils from man to cattle. then they brought the captives the spoils and the booty to Moses to Eliezer the priest and to all the congregation of the children of Israel to the camp in the Arab boat of Moab by the Jordan across from Jericho okay so very short description of the battle we don't get any tactics or anything we just get they attack the many in particular Midianite tribes now this isn't all the Midianites in the world remember the Midianites are just basically groups of Ishmaelites and Edomites, right? So this isn't like Moses' father-in-law Jethro, who's a Midianite, right? These are these particular tribes of Midianites in this area of Moab who were involved

with what happened at Baal Peor. And Moses, Eleazar the priest, and all the rulers of the congregation went to meet them outside the camp. But Moses was angry with the overseers of the army, with the captains over thousands and rulers over hundreds who were cunning with the battle line of the war. So Moses said to them, why did you take every female alive? Well, I think we know. They wanted slaves. They wanted female slaves, not because female slaves or Carter. Yeah. Right? They wanted sex slaves. And Moses is like, what are you doing? For on account of Balaam's counsel, they were with the sons of Israel and caused them to depart from and despise the Lord's word and the incident at Peor, when there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Right? So, like, listen, man, right? It's not okay to sleep with them now. Like, what are you thinking, right? now we go in these temple prostitutes well now they belong to us so it's okay to right like so all these women are temple prostitutes the ones they took yes now i don't think this is not like a civilization many guys don't live in cities right they're nomadic right so these are nomadic tribal groups right who are engaged in certain ritual activities and this kind of thing this is not sort of a a civilization where they have cities and art and culture and all of this and you know hey man this guy's a blacksmith why are you picking on him right I mean, in a way, even though they're non-combatants, they're not... Like, their goal is to murder the Israelites. Right. They were part of the plan of Balak and Balaam to kill the Israelites, so that they could kill them. Right? That was the goal. Right? They're part of the plan. Right. To defeat them in battle and kill them. Right? So this is, yes, these are not innocent people. Now, here's some fun translations. now therefore kill every male among all the little ones and every woman who slept with a man so that every woman who slept with a man there's a reason for that right because they're going to distinguish well wait if that woman's a virgin she hasn't participated in any of this stuff so if she wasn't part of that she's innocent of that right and so she doesn't deserve to die she wasn't part of this the the little ones is interesting because what what do they you think

they want you to think with this translation they want you to think babies right you think oh kill all the male babies that's what moses is doing that's kind of ironic isn't it given where moses started out right that's that what it says it's all the men from among the youths meaning the ones who are of military age, but didn't go out to fight you. The ones who are military age. Now, why would you need to do that? Because even though they didn't go out to fight the Israelites that day, they were again part of the plan. They were part of the army that was going to come kill all the Israelites, right? Because remember what the plan was? The plan was Balaam tried to curse Israel and couldn't. So Balaam couldn't attack and kill all the Israelites. Okay. And so Balaam and Balaam concocted this plan to get God angry at the Israelites so they could come kill them all. This wasn't like we want to share our beautiful pagan religion with you. Right. And we're very sex positive in our religion. Right. That's not what was happening here, right? This was a plot to kill them and wipe them out. And so this is Moses saying, hey, everybody who was feasibly involved in this needs to go. You can't take them as a slave as much as you might like to for various reasons, right, to enrich yourself. Why can't you? Well, not only is obviously sex slavery a problem from the perspective of the Torah, but even in the case of, like, the males, is it smart to have a population of young military-age men who were recently plotting to murder you all as slaves? When you're traveling through the desert and you're about to go into a land and be fighting, and behind you, you have a bunch of people who hate you, who you're keeping as slaves, right? This makes no sense, right? Remember, Moses is mad that they took all these people as slaves and brought them back. And you say, well, how do we deal with this situation now? Right? Now you've brought them back here. what do we do right well everybody involved right that's what god sent us to do right is to punish me and it's rough justice right they

were plotting to kill the israelites so they lose their they lose their lives right the ones who aren't involved was it's like well we're not going to murder the ones who weren't kill the ones who weren't involved that you brought back okay so now we got to deal with that too but keep alive for yourselves all the young girls who have not slept with a man okay now people will literally quote this verse to say that the bible says it's okay to take sex lives is that your takeaway from what we just read kind of the opposite right right why is What would take for yourselves mean, particularly if these are virgins? Wives, they are being virgins, they are able to contract a lawful marriage. We're going to get, in Deuteronomy 10, it's going to specifically lay out the process, right? Because they didn't circumcise women. So how does a woman like this become an Israelite? right well the main way she would become an israelite would be marrying an israelite man who is circumcised right and then she comes and she eats the passover with the family and everything but there was a whole process where they would shave their head and do all these things it was sort of a rite of initiation right to bring them into the people but that's what he's saying so the ones who had nothing to do with this right young women contract a lawful marriage if you want to take one of them as your wife that's fine right that's fine you can marry them and this is i think we've talked about this before but it bears repeating this is something people don't understand about social organization at this time in history and for a long time after for a long time after you have to realize the combined infant mortality rates and maternal death rates in these cultures right so number one super high infant mortality rate meaning if you want to have three or four children live to adulthood you're having eight or nine kids at this time in history okay so when you think about that a woman who's going to have eight or nine kids, that puts just as much stress on your body in the Bronze Age as now. Here's the difference. They don't have prenatal vitamins. They don't have prenatal care. They don't have all the things we have now, right, to help mothers. And even then, even now, having eight or nine kids is hard, really hard on a woman's body, okay? But a woman in the Bronze Age with none of that, trying to do that. It's not surprising. Number one cause of death for most of human history for women was died in childbirth. Due to a clamcy and all kinds of things, right? That

didn't even have names back then, but just women died in childbirth. Okay. Meaning every time a mother dies in childbirth, you have a father with a bunch of kids with no mother. often young kids new at least one newborn a lot of the time and so because of that at a higher mortality rate in general right see now we're so used to women living longer than men it wasn't that way in the broads age it was actually the other way around so there was a constant need for wives in the culture right there was a constant need for wives and men who lived to an old age often had two or three wives, not at a time, in sequence over the course of their lives. And again, this is true, not just, this is true until, what, 15th, 16th, 17th century. I was reading about this recently. It's true until 1870. Yeah, yeah. I mean, because less extreme numbers. Right. The real change doesn't come until then. Yeah. And so this is just a thing. Well, again, infant mortality rate, it's not like you could just decide, hey, we need a lot more female babies, guys. That's not how that works, right? And so there is this need to bring in women, not as slaves or sex slaves, but as brides from outside. This is why Deuteronomy is going to have all those rules for how to do that. that protect the women by the way right in that case right so yeah this is this is just a reality of of society at this point so that's why you'd be like well why would all these guys all of a sudden want to take these midianites as wives well there's probably a lot of widowers and young men, just young men who can't find wives in the Israelite camp at this point. That's why. Verse 19, But you remain outside the camp seven days, and everyone who killed or touched someone killed, both you and your captives shall be purified in the third day and the seventh day. Purify every garment, everything made of leather, everything woven of goat's hair, and everything made of wood. Then Eliezer the priest said to the men in the army who came from the battle lines of the war, This is the ordinance of the law which the Lord commanded Moses. Besides the gold, the silver, the brass, the iron, the lead, and the tin, everything that can pass through the fire shall be purified otherwise. It shall be purified with the water of purification. Therefore, whatever cannot pass through the fire shall pass through the water. You shall also wash your clothes on the seventh day and be clean, and afterward you may come into the camp.

So notice the high priest is involved in this because he's the one who administers the cleanliness. who's ready to come into the camp and approach God in that way. And the men need to do this. Why? Because they've killed people and touched the slain. They have what we, in our modern terms, call trauma. That was just as traumatic an experience in the Bronze Age for a human to kill another human as it is today. The fact that God told them to do it and that they were doing it for reasons of God's justice, and they were doing it to protect their families and their camp, doesn't mean it wasn't traumatic for them to kill another human being. And so they have what we would now call PTSD. It used to be called battle fatigue and shell shock and all kinds of other things, right? They started talking about it, right? But they have to deal with this. And so this purification process from uncleanness has a purpose. It has a purpose for these men of walking them through, reincorporating them back into the camp. It's not to communicate to them that what they did was wrong. They know what they did wasn't right. They know it was what they needed to do. They're commanded to do. They know it wasn't right. It wasn't good that this had to happen, right? And so on the third day, right, they wash themselves in the middle of the week. And on the seventh day, they wash all their clothes, right? They wash all their weapons. Everything that's metal goes through a fire to purify it, right? Their clothing all gets washed in water, right? And purified. And they're cleansed of it. And then they come back into the society so god who wrote the torah who made human beings knows how human beings work but you know we being super smart have to reinvent the wheel all the time and so you know we now have we talk about soldiers having ptsd and trauma and reintegrating people into society because we're reinventing the wheel right god already knew about this god already told us about this we've exiled all these categories of cleanness and uncleanness we're working in all these weird juridical categories of no this was a just war so everything's fine you know when it's not ask any soldier it's not right and now we're having to to sort of rediscover it right but this is why and this is this has been all through the history of the

church so you read saint basil of the great's manual for confessions uh his canons regarding confession and he says you know someone who kills someone in a war it's not murder right so murder had at least three years of penance depending on the circumstances it's not murder so you just do one year of penance. Right. And modern people always point at that and try to argue one way or the other. Oh, see, see, it's a sin. Even if you're killing somebody in a war, it's a sin because see, there's a year of penance. And then the other side is like, well, no, see, it says it's not murder. Oh, see, it's not murder. You're both missing the point. Again, The point is not this juridical thing of whether it's a sin or not. It's always a sin to take another human life. Ask someone who's done it. They'll tell you, right? If they're a really evil person, they'll tell you gleefully, but they'll still tell you it was evil, right? That's not the question. The question is, someone has done this. How do you bring them back into the community of the church, right? How do you reintegrate them into the life of the church? and there's a lot of people out there. There are a lot of veterans out there who desperately want and need that kind of reintegration into community, right? They don't want to be slandered and told their murderers, but they also don't want to just be told over and over again. No, no, it's fine. Everything's fine. You didn't do anything wrong, right? They want reality, and that's what Christ has to offer. Again, the Lord spoke to Moses saying, Take the sum of the spoils of the captives from man to cattle, you and Eliezer the priest, and the rulers of the families and the congregation. And divide the spoils between the warriors who went out into the battle lines and all the congregation. And levy a tribute for the Lord on the men of war who went out to the battle lines, one soul of every 500 men, and of the cattle, the oxen, the sheep, and the goats. Then you shall take their tribute and give it to Eliezer the priest.

So Moses and Eliezer, the priest, did as the Lord commanded Moses. So God doesn't say you have to, I mean, I don't know who you'd give all the stuff back to at this point anyway. Right? But all the stuff they took. So we dealt with the people they took. Now it's the stuff they took. Right? And God says, well, you're offering some of this to God. Because wealth now is basically judged in animals. You're offering a certain portion to God and a certain portion to the Levites. Right? For their upkeep. Because remember, you're about to go into the land and they're not going to get any of it. They're going to need you to give them the upkeep. Right? And then the rest will get distributed amongst the Israelites. So the booty remaining from the plunder, which the men of war took, was 675,000 sheep, 72,000 oxen, 61,000 donkeys, and 32,000 human souls, that is, the women who had not slept with a man. And the half, the portion for those who had gone out to war, was a number 337,500 sheep. And the Lord's tribute of the sheep was 675. Okay, this is going to be a lot of math. And remember, none of these are exact numbers because that is an insane number of sheep. Okay, so that is not like totally, right? It's whenever they get to the point where you say a certain number of thousands, it's thousands as big groups, like big collections. herds. Insert the correct word for the group of group of animals, right? Okay. The oxen were 36,000, of which the Lord's tribute was 72. The donkeys were 30,500, of which the Lord's tribute was 61. The human souls were 16,000, of which the Lord's tribute was 32 souls. So Moses gave the Lord's tribute, God's choice portion to Eleazar the priest as the Lord commanded Moses. Then from the children of Israel's half, which Moses divided from the men of war, that is the half belonging to the congregation, right? So we have half goes to the guys who actually fought, half goes to everybody else. Both of those we get the chunk given to God and the chunk given to the Levites. what's gonna what's the lord gonna do with his 61

uh presumably those would end up going to the levites they would be redeemed they'd offer remember same thing with the donkeys right like they're unclean out remember it said if you'd say if you're first born as a donkey you don't offer the donkey because it's an unclean animal you give right another animal instead same thing with firstborn humans remember you give you give an animal instead so in terms of effort actually offering them to god an animal would be given instead and they would be redeemed and the person who offered the animal then right so in this case those women someone would decide they wanted to marry one of those women they would then give the requisite sacrifice to god to redeem them because they belong to him well yeah and the ones going to the levites are going to be yeah yeah was there going to be any situation where

it's like if they're like too young for marital age they would just be redeemed by a household

that would take them in is that kind of well they would be betrothed okay right and then when they reached marriageable age the marriage would happen right right so they would state their intent right and redeem them right and then yeah so and and there is this underlying question here of course from our modern perspective which is like well what did the particular women think about this right that's what if they didn't want to marry this guy and that's a fair question to consider from our modern perspective but we have to also realize the societal perspective at the time they didn't care what the man thought about this either most of the time right these marriages were arranged by somebody higher up in the unless it was like the clan leader who was marrying the woman he might get to pick himself right but if you're anybody to the clan leader the clan leader picks who you marry right so a lot of these women would be getting betrothed to like 10 year old boys for when they reach 13 and 14 which was marriageable age of the broads age and they didn't get to pick either right that's grandpa picked or great grandpa picked right um and that was just how marriage was done we have a very different view of marriage now right where marriage is right two people who both meet each other somehow and decide they want to get married but that's still not how it's done in a lot of the world right um arranged marriages they actually have a better success rate supposedly i mean success You get into the weeds there. But yeah, and so we're going to find, and it's important to remember that because there's a lot of things. Like when we get into Proverbs over and over again, it's going to talk to men and say, find love, find happiness, find joy with the wife of your youth. Like why would that be a command? right well the idea there is the wife of your youth means whoever you were married to who you didn't get to pick right maybe your personalities don't totally gel right maybe maybe the two of you don't think the other one is the most beautiful person they've ever met and that could go both ways right uh maybe one or both of you is kind of let yourself go since you got right like whatever right but it's but but uh you didn't get to choose and so there would be men go figure who once they were adult adults and had some influence and had some money would kind of look around and be like you know what i think maybe i could do better in the whole wife

department and divorce the wife of their youth right because they think they found somebody better, right? And scripture is saying, no, right? No, that's wrong, right? Because it's a misunderstanding of what love is. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of what love is. Because, of course, our example, and sometimes in these very passages, what love is, is God and his people. God doesn't stay faithful to his people because he can't do better. He can do better than me. Like he could, he could do better than his people collectively through most of the Old and New Testaments, right? The things we do, right? Like God doesn't just go out and find, you know, the best people. And so if you actually love someone, right, if you actually learn what love is, the two of you learn what love is together, right, then that, well, I could do better. Well, what do you mean do better? Have someone who piques my lust more? Is that doing better have someone whose family would help me out socially or politically or economically that's not that's doing better what does it mean to do better right and so what what scripture is saying there is no no you need to do better at loving your spouse and your children and your family

you said sometimes in other contexts that love isn't so much a feeling as it is something you do yes the way you treat someone yes act towards that person so that would be involved too

yes yeah yeah yeah yeah we more frequently i mean there's some of us who are jaded right like you know oh i want to marry somebody rich so i don't have to work you know or whatever Right? There are people like that who are that jaded. But frankly, most contemporary people, it's emotional, romantic love. Right? And it's like, cool. If you're lucky, that'll last until the wedding day. Right? And then you got a honeymoon period. And then the day comes where you don't feel that way. And if you're a contemporary secular person, that's when you get divorced. Right? Because, oh, the feeling's gone. And I'm going to go out and find someone else who makes me feel that way. And then guess what happens? The cycle repeats itself.

And then you end up at some age, divorced multiple times, in this sad chase for someone who's going to make you happy permanently, which will never happen. The other kind of person, they have that day where they're not feeling it, right? And because they're a moral person, right? They say, you know what? I'm not feeling it right now, but I'm going to stay faithful anyway. I'm going to be faithful to this person. I'm going to love this person. I'm going to do the things that love is anyway. And then you know what happens? After a little while, that feeling comes back. And then it fades again. And then it comes back. And then it fades again. Because life happens. But if you stay faithful through it all, then there's all kinds of benefits down the road for that. I say to people, like young people getting married, and we have some younger people here, But one of their parents is here. So if he throws something at me, I'll know I went too far. But I'll say, okay, you've got a couple in their early 20s, newlyweds, can't keep their hands off each other. You've got another couple in their 80s. They've been married 60 years, right? Now, I can tell you which of those two couples is probably having hotter sex. but i could also tell you which of those two couples is really in love and i think anyone who's honest can tell you which one of those couples they'd rather be a part of if they had to choose one of the two it doesn't seem that way when you're 22 it doesn't seem like that's what you really want when you're 22 but that is what you really want even when you're 22 right that's that's what's ultimately gonna do it so i don't know how we ended up down this rabbit trail but uh war brides got us here somehow uh but no we were talking about we're talking about you know they don't seem to care about whether the woman wants to marry the particular man so i was putting out yeah they don't care whether the man wants to marry the particular woman either in most cases yeah so now we're back to counting livestock um So then for the children of Israel's half, which Moses divided from the men of war, that is the half belonging to the congregation, was 337,500 sheep, 36,000 oxen, 30,500 donkeys, and 16,000 human souls. And from the children of Israel's half, Moses took one of every 50 from men to cattle and gave them to the Levites who kept charge of the tabernacle of the Lord in the manner the Lord commanded Moses. When all those established in positions as commanders in the army, the captains over thousands and rulers over hundreds, came near to Moses, they said to Moses,

Your servants took the sum of the men of war with us, and not a man of us is missing. Therefore, we have brought a gift to the Lord. what every man found of articles of gold, bracelets, rings, armlets, and hair clasps to make atonement for us before the Lord. So Moses and Eliezer the priest took the gold from them, every crafted article, right? And it's to make atonement. So they then take those things and beat them mercilessly to punish them for the sins. No. Obviously, here we have atonement again, and there's nothing being punished, just to point that out. Well, it sounds like it's a thank thing. They're like, hey, God, none of us died, so. Yes. Yeah, it's a thank one. Yeah. Yes. So every choice portion of gold which they dedicated to the Lord from the captains over thousands and rulers over hundreds and 16,750 shekels of each of the men in the war had taken plunder for himself. So Moses and Eliezer the priests took the gold from the captains over thousands and rulers over hundreds and brought these into the Tabernacle of Testimony as a memorial for the children of Israel before the Lord. Nothing gets punished. But how is it an atonement then? Because it's not doing purification either. Remember the verb, the Hebrew verb, we just had Yom Kippur last week, means to cover. And we have this word memorial. So this gift, right, it's not the gift itself, it's not the physical objects itself, but this gift to God, right, covers whatever sins and transgressions they have committed, right? So God already brought them back without anyone having died. God already did that for them, right? which they didn't deserve because they're saying we didn't deserve that. We're right. We're sinful. Right. And so they offer this right after the fact, right, as an atonement for their sin. Why am I making such a big deal out of this? Well, because there's this great verse that we read. Like in 2 Peter, true love covers a multitude of sins. and if you read how that was interpreted by the church fathers starting in the second century they all interpreted that as meaning when you give to the poor and the needy when you perform acts of charity that atones for your sins and what did they mean were they saying oh you well jesus didn't do it so however you want to translate a tone jesus didn't do it and so

you need to go and do no no no jesus already did it just like they'd already all come back alive right so why are you going out and doing acts of charity in thanksgiving for what christ has already done for you right the blessings he's given you for what you've received and in that process of giving and giving back, what do you experience? You experience the forgiveness of your sins. Because these men coming back, zero of them have died. Why would they feel the need for atonement? Well, because the favor and the goodness that God has shown to them has revealed to them how undeserving they are, how unworthy they are of it. And so what the atonement is purifying or cleansing is that feeling of unworthiness, that unworthiness of what they've already received from God. Not because now that they gave God some gold, now they are worthy of it, like the gold was fair payment. Right? but they have that experience of that feeling of what we might call guilt or unworthiness, right? Being removed, right? And that's what St. Peter's pointing at too. If you understand what Christ has done for you, right? All of us should feel unworthy of that, right? But God doesn't just want us to sit around and flagellate ourselves and be, Oh, I am a worm. Sorry, Martin Luther. um right whip ourselves and oh i'm terrible i'm horrible and be morbid and fall into despair right when we go out and we perform acts of love for other people right we experience the remedy of that feeling of unworthiness by expressing our thankfulness right so it's the same dynamic right in both cases does that make sense people are nodding at me for those listening at home later that's hopefully you're nodding at home too

okay one go through listing all the numbers of all the the oxen and the donkeys and everything Is it just to kind of make us aware that it was a lot? Or is it, like, is there a need?

Well, twofold, right? It's the generosity of God in giving the spoils, right? So there is that. But then also, remember how we've seen over and over again, this is a pattern in the Torah through all these books, right? So, like, we got the tabernacle instructions and all this detail. And then we read about them building all the things for the tabernacle in the same level of detail and it's like okay why are we going through all this again like how many hints of gold they did the right because the point is they did exactly what they were told to do right so part of laying all this out in addition to showing us the big how generous god is with the spoils is showing how much they received and how much they gave to say They did exactly as the math checks out. They did exactly as they were commanded to do. Yeah. Listen next time as Father Stephen DeYoung continues his study of the scriptures on the whole counsel of God. Father Stephen's email address is wholecouncil at ancientfaith.com. That's wholecouncil at ancientfaith.com.