Phinehas “has turned back My wrath from the children of Israel,” was the divine message. “He was zealous for his God, and made atonement for the children of Israel.”
The judgments given to Israel destroyed the survivors of that huge group who nearly forty years earlier brought upon themselves the sentence, “They shall surely die in the wilderness.” During their camping on the plains of Jordan, “of those who were numbered by Moses and Aaron the priest when they numbered the children of Israel in the Wilderness of Sinai ... there was not left a man of them, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun” (Numbers 26:64, 65).
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God had sent judgments on Israel for yielding to the attractive temptations of the Midianites, but the tempters were not to escape the wrath of divine justice. “Take vengeance on the Midianites for the children of Israel,” was the command of God to Moses; “afterward you shall be gathered to your people.” One thousand men were chosen from each of the tribes and sent out under the leadership of Phinehas. “And they warred against the Midianites, just as the Lord commanded Moses, and they killed ... the five kings of Midian. Balaam the son of Beor they also killed with the sword” (Numbers 31:1-8).
Such was the end of those who plotted evil against God’s people. When people “gather together against the life of the righteous,” the Lord will bring upon them “their own iniquity, and shall cut them off in their own wickedness” (Psalm 94:21, 23).
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