Numbers 31 Summary and Study Guide: The War Against Midian

Twelve thousand men came home from Midian with every soldier alive, and the first thing Moses did was walk out of the camp and lose his temper with them. This Numbers 31 summary and study guide covers the Bible chapter that gives two verses to the battle and fifty-two to everything that followed it.

Setting the Stage

Israel had come through forty years in the wilderness and was camped on the flat land east of the Jordan River, opposite Jericho. While they waited there, women from Moab and Midian drew Israelite men into sleeping with them and into worshipping a god at a place called Peor. A plague broke out, and twenty-four thousand people died (Numbers 25:9).

God gave Moses an order about it that had not yet been carried out: strike the Midianites, because they had trapped Israel on purpose (Numbers 25:16-18). Five chapters pass before anyone acts on it. Numbers 31 is where that order is finally obeyed, and where God tells Moses it will be the last thing he does.

Comprehensive Numbers 31 Summary

God told Moses to take vengeance on Midian, meaning a sentence carried out rather than a grudge settled, and told him at the same time that this would be his last act before he died. Moses called for a thousand men from each tribe, twelve thousand in all, out of an army of more than six hundred thousand. Phinehas son of Eleazar the priest went with them carrying the sanctuary’s holy objects and the signal trumpets. No general is named anywhere in the chapter.

Israel killed the Midianite men they found, killed five Midianite kings, and killed Balaam, the seer Balak had hired to curse Israel. They took the women and children, the herds and the goods, burned the towns and the camps, and brought all of it back.

Moses went out to meet them and was furious. The women standing in front of him were, he said, the ones who had drawn Israel into Peor, and the army had brought them home. He ordered the boys and the women who had been with a man put to death, and the young girls kept alive.

What follows takes thirty-five verses. Everyone who had killed or touched a dead body waited seven days outside the camp and was purified on the third day and the seventh. Eleazar the priest then ruled on the plunder: metal through the fire, everything else through the water. God divided the spoil in half, soldiers and civilians, and took a portion out of each half for the priests and the Levites.

At the end the officers counted their men and found every one of them alive. They brought God the gold they had taken, sixteen thousand seven hundred and fifty shekels of it, and asked for nothing in return.

One Word Summary

• Reckoning: an order given five chapters earlier is finally carried out.
• Aftermath: nobody goes home until the rebuke, the cleansing and the counting are finished.
• Cleansing: nothing re-enters the camp until fire or water has touched it.

In One Sentence

At God’s command Moses sent twelve thousand Israelites against Midian, where they killed five kings and Balaam, and then spent the rest of the chapter purifying themselves and dividing the plunder before God, because even a war He had ordered left His people needing to be made clean.

Theme of Numbers 31

Numbers 31 is about holiness under pressure. God holds Midian to account for deliberately corrupting His people, and the judgment falls on the ones who engineered the corruption rather than on a random enemy. Two more ideas run alongside that one and the chapter will not let either go.

Nothing touched by death comes into God’s camp uncleansed, however right the cause was. And nothing gained belongs entirely to the man who gained it, which is why the last thing anyone carries in this chapter is carried into God’s tent.

Numbers 31 Outline

• Numbers 31:1-2: God tells Moses to take vengeance on the Midianites for Israel, and says this will be the last thing he does before he dies.
• Numbers 31:3-6: Moses raises a thousand men from each tribe and sends the twelve thousand out with Phinehas, the holy objects and the trumpets.
• Numbers 31:7-8: Israel defeats Midian, killing the men, the five kings Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur and Reba, and Balaam son of Beor.
• Numbers 31:9-12: The army takes the women, the children, the livestock and the goods, burns the towns and camps, and brings it all back to the camp near Jericho.
• Numbers 31:13-18: Moses meets the returning army outside the camp, is angry that the women of Peor were spared, and gives his order about the captives.
• Numbers 31:19-20: Moses sends the soldiers and their captives outside the camp for seven days and tells them what to purify.
• Numbers 31:21-24: Eleazar the priest states the law for the plunder: fire for what survives fire, water for the rest.
• Numbers 31:25-30: God gives Moses the rule for the plunder: half to the soldiers and half to the rest of Israel, with one in five hundred of the soldiers’ share for the priests and one in fifty of the people’s share for the Levites.
• Numbers 31:31-35: Moses and Eleazar carry the rule out, and the plunder is counted at 675,000 sheep, 72,000 cattle, 61,000 donkeys and 32,000 young women.
• Numbers 31:36-41: The soldiers’ half is set out and one in five hundred of it goes to Eleazar the priest.
• Numbers 31:42-47: The people’s half is set out and one in fifty of it goes to the Levites.
• Numbers 31:48-54: The officers report that no soldier is missing and bring their gold to the tabernacle as an offering.

Eleazar’s Ruling on the Plunder

Verses 21 to 24 are the only place in the chapter where a priest speaks. Eleazar had taken over as high priest after Aaron died (Numbers 20:25-28), and Bible teachers point to this ruling as the earliest instance of a high priest stating the law God gave Moses and then applying it to a case Moses had not addressed.

“This is the ordinance of the law which the LORD commanded Moses; Only the gold, and the silver, the brass, the iron, the tin, and the lead, Every thing that may abide the fire, ye shall make it go through the fire, and it shall be clean: nevertheless it shall be purified with the water of separation: and all that abideth not the fire ye shall make go through the water.”

Numbers 31:21-23

Eleazar told the soldiers what God’s law required of them. Anything that can survive being burned, meaning gold, silver, copper, iron, tin and lead, has to be put through fire and then still sprinkled with the water of purification. Anything that would burn is put through the water alone.

The ruling has four parts:

• Who it came from: Eleazar the priest, speaking on the authority of a law already given, not on his own opinion.
• What it covered: six metals by name, then a general category, “every thing that may abide the fire,” so that nothing captured fell outside it.
• The order of treatment: fire first where fire is possible, and the water of purification afterwards even then. Burning a thing was not enough on its own.
• When it ended: the seventh day, after the clothes were washed, and only then could a soldier come back inside.

The water of separation named here comes from Numbers 19, where God appointed it as the remedy for anything death had touched. That is why a chapter about captured goods ends up quoting a law written about corpses.

Observations from Numbers 31

Two Verses of Fighting, Fifty-Two of Everything Else (vv. 7-8, 9-54)

God gave the order, and by the end of verse 8 the fighting is finished. Everything else happens after the fighting stops: a rebuke, seven days outside the camp, fire and water, a count, a division, an offering. A reader who opens this chapter expecting a war story gets an aftermath instead, and it is in the aftermath that God shows what holiness costs.

God Speaks Twice, and the Voices Between Are Human (vv. 1, 15-18, 21-24, 25)

“And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying” opens verse 1, and the same words open verse 25. God’s first speech sends the army out. His second tells Moses how to divide what they brought back.

Between those two speeches the voices belong to men: Moses angry with his officers in verses 15 to 18, and Eleazar stating the law in verses 21 to 24. Verse 16 gives the reason Moses himself gives for his order, and the chapter records no word from God attached to it.

Counting Runs Through the Whole Chapter (vv. 4, 26, 28, 30, 49)

A thousand from each tribe, then the sum of the prey, then one of five hundred and one of fifty. The chapter counts constantly, and the last count is the officers counting themselves: “there lacketh not one man of us” (v. 49). Every one of the twelve thousand came home. A chapter full of death closes on a headcount where nobody is missing, and what the officers bring to Moses next is an offering rather than a claim.

The Camp Is the Boundary the Second Half Is Built Around (vv. 13, 19, 24)

Moses and the leaders go out to meet the army “without the camp” in verse 13. The soldiers stay “without the camp” for seven days in verse 19. Verse 24 finally lets them in.

Getting back inside the camp is what the entire purification sequence is for, because the camp is where God’s tent stood in the middle of the tribes (Numbers 2:17). Anything that had touched death waited outside until it was clean.

Difficult Verses Explained

Why Did Moses Order the Boys and the Women Killed in Numbers 31:17-18?

Moses gives one reason, and the chapter gives no other: “Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the LORD” (v. 16). These were the women who had drawn Israel into idol worship at Peor, and twenty-four thousand Israelites had died in the plague that followed.

Moses ordered the death of the male children and of every woman who had been with a man, and he ordered it in anger, standing outside the camp, looking at the captives. Nothing in the chapter softens that, and a Christian who finds these two verses hard to read is reading them correctly.

The chapter also leaves four things unsaid, and each one is a place readers fill in for themselves:

• Whether each woman put to death had personally taken part at Peor. Moses charges the group; the chapter charges no individual.
• Why the boys were included. The chapter names guilt of their own nowhere.
• What life became for the girls who were kept, beyond the four words “keep alive for yourselves,” which the chapter leaves without explanation.
• Whether Moses asked God before giving this order. God commanded the campaign in verses 1 and 2 and spoke again in verse 25, and the chapter attaches no word from Him to verses 17 and 18.

Where Scripture is silent, saying so is the honest answer. What Scripture does supply is the law God gave shortly afterwards about exactly this situation. Deuteronomy 21:10-14 gave a captive woman a month to mourn her father and mother, forbade her being sold, and forbade her being treated as merchandise. That law is God putting limits on the practice, and it is the nearest thing to an answer the Law itself offers.

Does Numbers 31 Describe the Wiping Out of the Midianites?

No, and Scripture itself settles it. About two centuries later Midian is oppressing Israel so heavily that the Israelites hide in caves and cry out to God (Judges 6:1-6), and God then cuts Gideon’s own army down to three hundred men so that nobody could credit the victory to Israel’s numbers (Judges 7:2-7). A people wiped out in Numbers 31 could not have done that.

Two details in the chapter point the same way. Joshua 13:21 names the same five men, Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur and Reba, and calls them “dukes of Sihon,” meaning they ruled under the Amorite king whose territory Israel had just taken. So the Midian struck here was most likely the group settled next door to Israel’s camp rather than the whole nation. And older commentators such as John Gill note that the word “all” in “all the women of Midian” (v. 9) is supplied by the translators rather than standing in the Hebrew.

What Were the “Holy Instruments” Phinehas Carried in Numbers 31:6?

The chapter does not say, and Bible teachers have read it three ways. Some take it as the ark itself, which Israel did carry out at critical moments (Joshua 6:8). Some take it as the breastplate holding the Urim and Thummim, used for asking God a question.

Others read the “and” as “even,” so that the holy instruments are the silver trumpets of Numbers 10:9 and nothing besides. The Hebrew allows all three, and no verse in the chapter decides between them.

In Numbers 31:40, Were the Thirty-Two Women Given to Eleazar Sacrificed?

No. The chapter never describes their death, and the Law of Moses condemns human sacrifice in the plainest possible terms (Leviticus 18:21; Deuteronomy 12:31). They belong to the same pattern as the tithe. One portion in fifty of the people’s half went to the Levites for exactly the same reason (v. 47), and Numbers 18:26-28 already set up the priests receiving a tenth of a tenth from what Israel brought in.

What their service actually looked like is not stated. Exodus 38:8 mentions women who assembled at the door of the tabernacle, which may be the nearest picture Scripture gives of it, and that is as far as the evidence goes.

In Numbers 31:19, Why Did Soldiers Who Obeyed God Still Need Purifying?

Because the chapter treats contact with death as defiling whatever the reason for it was. Israel fought “as the LORD commanded Moses” (v. 7), and the same men spent a week outside the camp afterwards under the law of Numbers 19:11-13.

Guilt and uncleanness are two different things, and this chapter keeps them apart. It calls the campaign obedience and it calls the men who fought it unclean, and it holds both at once. Keeping those two apart may be how God stopped killing from ever becoming an ordinary thing among His people, though the chapter states the law without stating the reason. David is told something similar much later, when God will not let him build the temple because he had shed blood (1 Chronicles 28:3).

In Numbers 31:50, What Kind of Atonement Was the Officers’ Gold?

It was an acknowledgment of mercy rather than a payment for sin. No blood was shed for it, and Scripture is firm that sin is only ever paid for by blood (Hebrews 9:22). The closest parallel in the Law is the half shekel every Israelite paid when the people were counted, which Exodus 30:11-16 also calls atonement money and which purchased nothing.

The officers had just counted twelve thousand men and found twelve thousand alive. Their gold says they knew who had kept them alive.

Common Misunderstandings

• That Numbers 31 records the destruction of an entire people. Midian is a serious military power again by Judges 6, and the five kings killed here are named in Joshua 13:21 as under-rulers serving Sihon the Amorite, holding land next to Israel’s camp.
• That this was an ordinary war for territory or wealth. The chapter ties the campaign to Peor and never mentions land. Israel burned the towns instead of settling in them and went home to the plains of Moab. Paul later held Peor up to the Corinthian church as a warning against idolatry and immorality, which we cover in 26 Powerful Lessons from 1 Corinthians 10.
• That a war God commanded left the soldiers untouched by it. Every man who had killed or handled a corpse was shut out of the camp for a week, and the requirement reached his clothing, his leather, his wood and his metal too (vv. 19-24).
• That the LORD’s tribute of persons means Israel offered human sacrifice. The chapter describes a transfer, not a killing, and the Law it belongs to forbids human sacrifice outright.
• That Numbers 31 sets a precedent anyone can use. Israel acted on a direct command given to that nation at that moment through Moses. No nation and no church holds that commission, and the New Testament hands vengeance back to God (Romans 12:19).

Christ Connection

The clearest line from this chapter to Christ runs through its strangest instruction.

The water of separation that cleansed the soldiers was made with the ashes of a red heifer (Numbers 19), and the writer of Hebrews names that exact rite and then goes past it: “For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (Hebrews 9:13-14).

Ashes and water could make a man’s body fit to walk back through the gate of a camp. The blood of Christ cleans the conscience, which is what the ashes never reached. Ezekiel had already promised it as something God would do Himself: “Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean” (Ezekiel 36:25). God will wash His people until they are clean, and He does it Himself rather than handing them a basin.

The chapter’s ending points the same direction. The officers brought gold to make atonement for their souls, and gold could thank God for their lives without buying anything, which is exactly what Peter says: “ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers” but “with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Peter 1:18-19).

Silver and gold could never buy a person out of the empty life handed down to them, and the blood of Christ did. Nothing the officers carried out of Midian could have bought one of them.

Balaam’s death carries a third connection, and the New Testament makes it explicitly. Jesus tells the church at Pergamos that some of them “hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication” (Revelation 2:14). Christ names Balaam’s strategy as a danger still live in a New Testament church, which is what verse 16 of this chapter is describing. We work through that letter in 33 Life-Changing Lessons from Revelation 2.

Midian’s own story does not end where this chapter leaves it. Isaiah, looking ahead to the day God’s glory rises on His people, sees camels streaming in from every direction: “the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah; all they from Sheba shall come: they shall bring gold and incense; and they shall shew forth the praises of the LORD” (Isaiah 60:6).

Young camels from Midian arrive carrying gold and incense, and the people leading them are there to praise God. The nation judged in Numbers 31 turns up in the prophets among the worshippers, and that is the direction the whole Bible is travelling, toward a crowd out of every nation standing before the throne (Revelation 7:9).

When, Where, and Why

• When: The final weeks of Moses’ life, at the end of Israel’s forty years in the wilderness. God ties the two together in verse 2, telling Moses he will die once this is done. The second census of Numbers 26 has already been taken, and the tribes will ask for land east of the Jordan in the very next chapter.
• Where: The Israelite camp sat on the plains of Moab by the Jordan, opposite Jericho (v. 12), with the promised land visible across the water. The Midianites struck here were settled in territory that had belonged to Sihon the Amorite (Joshua 13:21), close enough to Israel’s camp that twelve thousand men could reach them and return. Midian itself was a group of tribes descended from Abraham through his wife Keturah (Genesis 25:1-4), which makes this a fight between relatives. Moses had spent forty years among them, married a Midianite wife, and met God in a burning bush in their country (Exodus 2:15-22; Exodus 3:1-4; Acts 7:29-30), and a Midianite named Hobab had guided Israel through the wilderness (Numbers 10:29-32).
• Why: Moses is closing an account before he dies. The order came in Numbers 25:16-18 after Midian used its own women as a weapon against Israel’s covenant with God, and the writer records the campaign and its long aftermath together so that the second generation would learn what it costs to be a holy people living next to nations that are not.

Key Verses

“Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites: afterward shalt thou be gathered unto thy people.”

Numbers 31:2

God tells Moses to settle the account with Midian, and then tells him that when it is settled he will die and be buried with his ancestors. God hands him an assignment and a death notice together, and Moses acts on both without arguing. Everything the chapter goes on to describe hangs on this verse.

“Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the LORD.”

Numbers 31:16

Moses is pointing at the women in front of him and saying that these are the people who, following Balaam’s advice, led Israel into unfaithfulness at Peor and brought a plague on the nation. This is the only reason the chapter gives for anything that happens in it. Balaam could not curse Israel, so he taught someone else how to make Israel curse itself.

“And they said unto Moses, Thy servants have taken the sum of the men of war which are under our charge, and there lacketh not one man of us.”

Numbers 31:49

The officers had done a headcount of the soldiers under their command, and not one of the twelve thousand was unaccounted for. They came to report it rather than to claim credit for it, and what they did next says how they read it.

“And Moses and Eleazar the priest took the gold of the captains of thousands and of hundreds, and brought it into the tabernacle of the congregation, for a memorial for the children of Israel before the LORD.”

Numbers 31:54

Moses and Eleazar received the officers’ gold and carried it into God’s tent so that it would stand there as a reminder to Israel of what God had done. The chapter ends in the place of worship rather than on the battlefield, which is where its whole second half has been heading.

Key Lessons from Numbers 31

• Corrupting God’s people is treated here as the graver attack, since Midian never met Israel in open battle and Midian is the nation called to account (v. 16).
• Obedience to a hard command did not leave the soldiers clean, and a full week passed before God let any of them back inside (v. 19).
• Influence carries weight before God, which is why Balaam died among the people he advised rather than in the country he had set out for (v. 8).
• A victory God gives does not rest on the size of the force He sends, and God asked for a thousand men per tribe when Israel could have fielded fifty times that (vv. 4-5).
• Gratitude that costs nothing is easy, and these officers gave up the gold they had taken and asked for nothing back (vv. 50-52).
• God let Israel bring nothing into His camp as they found it, and every garment, hide, piece of wood and scrap of metal went through fire or water first (vv. 22-23).

For the wider picture of where this campaign sits in the book, read our chapter-by-chapter study: The Book of Numbers Summary by Chapter.

Bible Study Questions

1. Verse 2 gives Moses an assignment and tells him he will die when it is finished. How does he respond in verses 3 to 6, and what does that response show about him?
2. Verses 4 and 5 raise only a thousand fighting men from each tribe. Why do you think God set the number that low?
3. Read verse 16 again. What exactly does Moses say the Midianite women did, and why does he treat that as an act of war?
4. Verses 17 and 18 are the hardest sentences in the chapter. Name in your own words what is hard about them, then list what the chapter states and what it leaves unsaid.
5. The soldiers obeyed God and still spent seven days outside the camp (v. 19). What is God protecting in His people by keeping those two things apart?
6. Read Psalm 106:28-31, where Scripture looks back on Peor and on what Phinehas did. How does that psalm change the way you read Numbers 31:6?
7. In verse 49 the officers report that nobody is missing, and in verse 50 they bring an offering. What would you have expected them to bring instead?
8. Read Revelation 2:14 next to Numbers 31:16. What does Jesus say is still happening in a church centuries later, and what does that ask of you?

To test what you remember across the whole book, try our 100-question Bible quiz on Numbers.

Frequently Asked Questions

Numbers 31, The Full Text (KJV)

Read the full chapter below for reference.

1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,

2 Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites: afterward shalt thou be gathered unto thy people.

3 And Moses spake unto the people, saying, Arm some of yourselves unto the war, and let them go against the Midianites, and avenge the LORD of Midian.

4 Of every tribe a thousand, throughout all the tribes of Israel, shall ye send to the war.

5 So there were delivered out of the thousands of Israel, a thousand of every tribe, twelve thousand armed for war.

6 And Moses sent them to the war, a thousand of every tribe, them and Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest, to the war, with the holy instruments, and the trumpets to blow in his hand.

7 And they warred against the Midianites, as the LORD commanded Moses; and they slew all the males.

8 And they slew the kings of Midian, beside the rest of them that were slain; namely, Evi, and Rekem, and Zur, and Hur, and Reba, five kings of Midian: Balaam also the son of Beor they slew with the sword.

9 And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods.

10 And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and all their goodly castles, with fire.

11 And they took all the spoil, and all the prey, both of men and of beasts.

12 And they brought the captives, and the prey, and the spoil, unto Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and unto the congregation of the children of Israel, unto the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by Jordan near Jericho.

13 And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp.

14 And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle.

15 And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive?

16 Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the LORD.

17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.

18 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

19 And do ye abide without the camp seven days: whosoever hath killed any person, and whosoever hath touched any slain, purify both yourselves and your captives on the third day, and on the seventh day.

20 And purify all your raiment, and all that is made of skins, and all work of goats’ hair, and all things made of wood.

21 And Eleazar the priest said unto the men of war which went to the battle, This is the ordinance of the law which the LORD commanded Moses;

22 Only the gold, and the silver, the brass, the iron, the tin, and the lead,

23 Every thing that may abide the fire, ye shall make it go through the fire, and it shall be clean: nevertheless it shall be purified with the water of separation: and all that abideth not the fire ye shall make go through the water.

24 And ye shall wash your clothes on the seventh day, and ye shall be clean, and afterward ye shall come into the camp.

25 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,

26 Take the sum of the prey that was taken, both of man and of beast, thou, and Eleazar the priest, and the chief fathers of the congregation:

27 And divide the prey into two parts; between them that took the war upon them, who went out to battle, and between all the congregation:

28 And levy a tribute unto the LORD of the men of war which went out to battle: one soul of five hundred, both of the persons, and of the beeves, and of the asses, and of the sheep:

29 Take it of their half, and give it unto Eleazar the priest, for an heave offering of the LORD.

30 And of the children of Israel’s half, thou shalt take one portion of fifty, of the persons, of the beeves, of the asses, and of the flocks, of all manner of beasts, and give them unto the Levites, which keep the charge of the tabernacle of the LORD.

31 And Moses and Eleazar the priest did as the LORD commanded Moses.

32 And the booty, being the rest of the prey which the men of war had caught, was six hundred thousand and seventy thousand and five thousand sheep,

33 And threescore and twelve thousand beeves,

34 And threescore and one thousand asses,

35 And thirty and two thousand persons in all, of women that had not known man by lying with him.

36 And the half, which was the portion of them that went out to war, was in number three hundred thousand and seven and thirty thousand and five hundred sheep:

37 And the LORD’S tribute of the sheep was six hundred and threescore and fifteen.

38 And the beeves were thirty and six thousand; of which the LORD’S tribute was threescore and twelve.

39 And the asses were thirty thousand and five hundred; of which the LORD’S tribute was threescore and one.

40 And the persons were sixteen thousand; of which the LORD’S tribute was thirty and two persons.

41 And Moses gave the tribute, which was the LORD’S heave offering, unto Eleazar the priest, as the LORD commanded Moses.

42 And of the children of Israel’s half, which Moses divided from the men that warred,

43 (Now the half that pertained unto the congregation was three hundred thousand and thirty thousand and seven thousand and five hundred sheep,

44 And thirty and six thousand beeves,

45 And thirty thousand asses and five hundred,

46 And sixteen thousand persons;)

47 Even of the children of Israel’s half, Moses took one portion of fifty, both of man and of beast, and gave them unto the Levites, which kept the charge of the tabernacle of the LORD; as the LORD commanded Moses.

48 And the officers which were over thousands of the host, the captains of thousands, and captains of hundreds, came near unto Moses:

49 And they said unto Moses, Thy servants have taken the sum of the men of war which are under our charge, and there lacketh not one man of us.

50 We have therefore brought an oblation for the LORD, what every man hath gotten, of jewels of gold, chains, and bracelets, rings, earrings, and tablets, to make an atonement for our souls before the LORD.

51 And Moses and Eleazar the priest took the gold of them, even all wrought jewels.

52 And all the gold of the offering that they offered up to the LORD, of the captains of thousands, and of the captains of hundreds, was sixteen thousand seven hundred and fifty shekels.

53 (For the men of war had taken spoil, every man for himself.)

54 And Moses and Eleazar the priest took the gold of the captains of thousands and of hundreds, and brought it into the tabernacle of the congregation, for a memorial for the children of Israel before the LORD.