Parasha: Matot · Aliyah: Third (Tiferet)

הן הנה….בדבר בלעם, "these are the very ones…in the affair with Bileam, etc." We must try and understand what Moses meant when he referred to "these are the very ones, etc." Besides, why was Moses so long-winded in his reference to Bileam and (subsequently) to פעור. The matter will become clear once we understand why both Pinchas and the pious people who had gone with him committed such an error.

Pinchas and his colleagues reasoned that the women who had played temptresses at the time had acted under duress, only carrying out their husbands' orders. Unmarried girls were similarly under duress having been ordered by their fathers to do whatever they had done to seduce the Israelites. Accordingly, Pinchas did not think that these women were guilty of death. Moses appreciated the considerations which had prompted Pinchas and his soldiers. This is why he pointed out that Pinchas and his colleagues would have been correct if the only thing these women had been guilty of was to cause the Israelites to indulge in illicit sex. However, in addition to their carrying out their husbands' and their fathers' orders respectively, they had committed another sin, one which they committed out of their own free will, namely that of Peor, i.e. getting the Israelites to worship that deity. According to Bamidbar Rabbah 20,23 these women prevailed on the Israelites to perform acts of obeisance to the image of Peor before letting them indulge their carnal desires. For this sin they were guilty of death, and this is what Moses referred to when he said הן הנה, i.e. they themselves (without outside pressure) initiated this part of the seduction. בדבר בלעם, at the instigation of Bileam, i.e. through the advice of Bileam to have the women offer themselves as sexual partners to the Israelites. If you examine the writings of our sages on the subject you will find that they attribute to Bileam only the advice that the Israelites be seduced sexually. Bileam never said that these women were to seduce the Israelites to worship or appear to worship any idols. By refusing to sleep with the Israelites unless the latter had first performed an act of idolatry, these women were guilty of the מעל בשם, the trespass against the Eternal G'd which our verse speaks about.

ועתה הרגו….הרוגו. "and now kill!…..kill." Why did the Torah have to repeat the command to kill separately for young male Midianites and for females who were no longer virgins? Sifri quotes Rabbi Yishmael as saying that the second הרוגו was necessary to separate this verse from the following verse. Had the Torah not written this word in between I would have understood the words וכל אשה in our verse as capable of referring either to what is written in verse 18 or to what is written in our verse. This seems problematical. If Rabbi Yishmael were correct, why did the Torah not interpose a statement such as החיו לכם, "keep alive for yourselves," as it did at the end of verse 18? If the Torah had done this there would have been no need to write the word הרוגו twice! Perhaps the Torah was afraid to write החיו לכם at this juncture as it would have appeared then that Moses commanded the Israelites to keep these Midianite virgins alive. Actually, Moses only gave permission to keep them alive. This is why the words וכל הטף introduced verse 18 to inform the Israelites of the status of these survivors, not to order them to keep these people alive.

We also need to understand the word הרגו at the beginning of verse 17. Why did the Torah not content itself with the word הרוגו at the end of this verse? Perhaps the Torah wanted to write the words ועתה הרגו together to teach the people that the rehabilitation of the nation which had been the objective of the whole campaign could not be achieved until the people mentioned in our verse had been killed. The sooner this would be accomplished, i.e. ועתה, "now," the sooner would the Israelites be completely rehabilitated concerning the sin at Shittim. Alternatively, the Torah may have wanted to write together the words הרגו לטף on the one hand and הרוגו לאשה, to indicate that we are dealing with two separate commandments. Or, the words simply allude to the fact that these people should be executed forthwith, i.e. ועתה.

החיו לכם, "keep alive for yourselves." The meaning is that those who were allowed to live should convert to Judaism and only when they were Jewish would they qualify for the description חיים, "to be alive," as then they would be allowed to get married and to remain "alive" by means of the children they would bear.