Vulgate: Numbers: Numbers Chapter 31

This is Numbers 31 from the Latin Vulgate Bible, a narrative passage in the legal-historical tradition of the Pentateuch. It recounts God's command to Moses to wage a war of vengeance against the Midianites: twelve thousand Israelite soldiers, led by Phinehas with sacred vessels and trumpets, defeat Midian, kill its five kings and the prophet Balaam, and return with captives and vast plunder. Moses rebukes the commanders for sparing the women, blaming Midianite women for the apostasy at Baal-Peor, and orders the killing of all male captives and non-virgin women, while virgin girls are to be kept alive. The passage then details elaborate purification laws for warriors and contaminated goods, followed by a precise arithmetical division of the spoils — hundreds of thousands of livestock and thirty-two thousand women — split equally between combatants and the community, with mandatory tithes to God (via the priest Eleazar) and the Levites. The chapter closes with the officers voluntarily donating captured gold as a propitiatory offering, noting no Israelite soldier was lost. Distinctively, the text is as much administrative-legal code as war narrative, embedding ritual purity requirements and a meticulous accounting of plunder distribution within a military campaign account.

Vulgate: Numbers: Numbers Chapter 31

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