Questioning God’s Justice
Rabbi Moshe Ben-Chaim
Reader: I’m a Noahide, and I’ve been trying to understand the Torah more seriously. I have a question about Book of Numbers 31, and I hope this doesn’t come across as offensive. I genuinely believe in the Hebrew Bible. But I’ve been struggling with this section. I’ve looked into different explanations from various Jewish sources and other perspectives, but I still can’t seem to find an answer that fully makes sense to me on a rational level. It’s one of those passages that just doesn’t sit right with my gut, and I don’t want to ignore that feeling or pretend I understand when I don’t. As someone who genuinely believes in God and wants to stay sincere in that belief, I’m just trying to be honest about where I’m struggling. I’d really appreciate any guidance or perspective that could help me understand this better.
The Midian Wars section of the Tanakh are the most difficult to reconcile with my belief in an all loving God. How could God:
1) Demand the slaughter of the ethnic group that Moses himself had married into?
2) Demand that not just all of the men, but all of the non-virgin women and young boys also be killed?
3) Group women into "virgin" and "non-virgin" categories, as though whether or not they'd had sex yet determined whether they are worthy of survival?
4) Enslave the young surviving women?
I've read both Jewish and Christian apologists who will say things like, "These girls were just adopted into domestic servitude." That isn't reassuring. I cannot convince myself that a girl who has just been kidnapped and made witness to the genocide of her whole community will be safe or feel safe among the Israeli men that just up and murdered her mother, father, and brothers before determining that she's a virgin so she gets to live another day. Everything that we're supposed to do, teach peace and love, seems to be undermined by a God who orders this.
Rabbi: From God’s creation of mankind, supplying all his physical needs, giving him a soul unlike other creatures, saving the Jews from Pharaoh and countless other enemies, creating miracles to save us, giving us His Torah and protecting His prophets, we gain a clear picture: God desires the good for man. But by “good,” we must understand that morality is defined by God’s wisdom, not man’s. There is much beyond man’s grasp, and he requires regular study to advance and mature his definitions of good, evil, justice, charity, and kindness, until we fulfill the edict, “As God is, so shall you act” (Shabbos 133b). God’s acts embody perfection, if we don’t act as He acts, we are flawed.
The bottom line is that if we have questions, that is due to our deficiencies, not God’s: “For the matter is not empty from you” (Deut. 32:47). On this verse, Rebbi Mana said, “If it is empty (in your eyes), it is from you because you do not exert yourself [to learn] about it.” Failure to study Torah diligently results in one’s low estimation of Torah and his questioning of God. But Torah is God’s wisdom, every word contains brilliance. And the Shima’s prayer, “A great love You have loved us…” said daily expresses God’s great concern that man have only what is best.
The world is His creation and operates according to His terms. As Elihu told Job, “As we cannot fathom God’s physical creations, certainly we cannot contend with His justice” (without study). You must also know that “peace and love” do not trump justice.
There are many examples teaching various aspects of God’s morality and justice. He annihilated the generation of the Flood, including infants. God explained why:
God saw how great was human wickedness on earth—how every thought of his heart was nothing but evil all the time. And God regretted having made humankind on Earth and it grieved His heart. God said, “I will blot out from the Earth humankind whom I created—humans together with animals, creeping things, and birds of the sky; for I regret that I made them.” (Gen. 6:5-7)
God commanded the annihilation of the 7 Nations occupying Canaan/Israel. No inhabitant was to be spared, including children, so their influence when adults is halted now:
However, in the towns of these peoples which God your God is giving you as a heritage (Israel), you shall not let a soul remain alive (Deut. 20:16).
God explains,
It is rather because of the wickedness of those nations that God is dispossessing them before you (Deut. 9:4).
God does not wish evil influences to harm the chances of others, so He kills those who choose evil to spare the innocents from learning their evil ways. God also kills innocent men. He killed Abraham 5 years early so he wouldn’t see his grandson Esav start a sinful life. He killed Chanoch hundreds of years earlier to save him from succumbing to sin, thereby allowing him to die righteous and not evil: “Chanoch walked with God; then he was no more, for God took him” (Gen. 5:24, see Rashi). Life, at times, is not beneficial. Children raised in the societies of the Flood and the 7 Nations had no hope of veering from their parents’ evil ways. Allowing them to live granted them no benefit, and in fact posed a threat to others. Therefore, they were killed. The Midianites sought to drive the Jews to Peor’s idolatry, and therefore were killed. God endorsed Moses as the greatest prophet (Deut. 34:10). Moses emphatically declared, “Now, therefore, slay every male among the noncombatants, and slay also every woman who has known a man carnally” (Ibid.). In that very Torah account itself, Moses justified killing the Midianites:
They are the very ones who, at the direction of Bilam, induced the Israelites to trespass against God in the matter of Peor, so that God’s community was struck by the plague (Num. 312:15,16).
Of all the judges, tribal heads and every wise Jew, not one opposed Moses’ command to kill the Midianites. They all understood the justice. God deemed the virgins innocent and no threat, so they alone were spared. Their virginity was determined by prophecy (Rashi, Num. 31:17). The virgins now greatly benefitted under the Jews’ Torah influence. Killing the evil Midianites Moses himself had married into was justified, including the non-virgin women and all men. They had no redeeming qualities. But Moses wife was righteous, and predated the Midianite’s sin.
Children cannot earn merit or commit sin, as they are too young to understand good and evil. Thus, justice cannot apply to them. Rashi says God will kill an infant if that is a proper method of punishing a parent. “Fathers are not killed on account of their sons' (sin) and sons are not killed on account of their fathers' (sins), each man in his own sin will die” (Deut. 24:16). The operative word here is “man”, that is, only once attaining the status of an adult—“man”—can one attain righteousness and justly earn God’s defense against death. Maimonides explains in Hilchos Teshuva 6:1:
The Holy One, blessed be He, knows how to exact punishment: There are certain sins for which justice determines that retribution be exacted in this world: on the sinner's person, on his possessions, or on his small children. [Retribution is exacted upon a person's] small children who do not possess intellectual maturity and have not reached the age where they are obligated to perform mitzvot [because these children] are considered as his property. [This concept is alluded to] by the verse [Deut. 24:16]: "A man will die because of his own sins."
Children have no merit. If God kills them in such cases, we must not view that child as a lost soul, as God is perfectly righteous and knows how to treat an innocent soul. King David said, “With the pure, You act purely, and with the perverse, You are devious” (Psalms 18:27). We can be sure that child’s soul has lost nothing. For God does not punish without cause: “For God does not torment willfully nor cause men grief” (Lamentations 3:33). Rashi says, “Rather the sin causes the grief (punishment).” Thus, sinless children whom God kills suffer no loss. We must not view that child as a lost soul. God manages departed souls justly.
Our culture affects our values. Just look at the demented values of today’s society, they cannot even define a gender, and they sympathize with Hamas who burned infants alive. Without provocation they butchered civilians and claim that rape is justified resistance. They march against Jews defending their families, but against true genocide they do not take any stand. From where must we learn true morality? Only from God who alone created all life and dictates what is justice. We must not let what is comfortable to our moral thinking to determine truth. Rather, we must study all God’s acts and derive true principles from Him alone. Rebbi Mana said, “If it is empty, it is from you because you do not exert yourself about it.”
This discussion must greatly broaden your considerations about God’s justice. In any case, as God created everything including justice, we are only students of His wisdom, and any complaint is foolish, but questions are wise. With earnest study, we might be fortunate to uncover God’s Torah clues and slowly unravel answers to our questions that will fully please our minds and hearts, just as Job discovered.