How can this offering - the gold from the officers' share of the booty from the destruction of the Midianites - bring atonement, and why was atonement required? This verse follows the account of the successful battle against the Midianites when although many Midianites were killed, it was at the L-rd's instruction, so surely no atonement was necessary on that account.

Sforno: Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno (1470-1550CE), Italian rabbi, philosopher and physician; born in Cesena, he went to Rome to study medicine; left in 1525 and after some years of travel, settled in Bolgna where he founded a yeshiva which he conducted until his death

Rashi: Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki (1040-1105CE), French rabbi who wrote commentaries on the Torah, the Prophets and the Talmud, lived in Troyes where he founded a yeshiva in 1067; focuses on the plain meaning (p'shat) of the text, although sometimes quite cryptic in his brevity

What is interesting is the reason the Targum provides for this behaviour: no man wanted to be joined in this world - and so in the next - with a woman who because of her life of idolatry and, now, attempting to buy her life with sex, would be sent to Gehenna. This bears a striking connection to Yeshua’s words about marriage: "For this reason a man should leave his father and mother and be united with his wife, and the two are to become one flesh. Thus they are no longer two but one. So then, no-one should break apart what G-d has joined together" (Mark 10:7-9, CJB). Intercourse is one of three ways that the rabbis consider a marriage to be contracted, so the writers of the midrash saw not only the Israelite man becoming permanently linked in this world to a Midianite woman if he had sexual intercourse with her (be that rape or consensual), but that the tie between the two would endure into the next world, with the Israelite man being dragged down to share her punishment for idolatry. Whether this was thought to be simply because of the link itself, or because her subsequent behaviour, sin and further idolatry, would cause him too to sin is unclear. We do know that Moshe taught the people: "Be careful, after [the nations of the Land] have been destroyed ahead of you, not to be trapped into following them; so that you enquire after their gods and ask, 'How did these nations serve their gods? I want to do the same'" (D'varim 12:30, CJB).

Rav Sha'ul picks up the same theme when he writes to the Corinthians. Corinth was a sea port and a cultic centre, so well supplied with prostitutes of every kind, and Sha'ul vividly highlights the issue: "Don't you know that your bodies are part of the Messiah? So, am I to take parts of the Messiah and make them parts of a prostitute? Heaven forbid! Don't you know that a man who joins himself to a prostitute becomes physically one with her? For the Tanakh says, 'The two will become one flesh'" (1 Corinthians 6:15-16, CJB). Sha'ul sees this physical link as having great spiritual strength, creating a bond that damages the believer. He goes on: "Run from sexual immorality! Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the fornicator sins against his own body" (v. 18, CJB). Sexual sin is something that affects us right inside; the way that pornography becomes an addiction is a modern proof of this old truth. As Rav Sha'ul concludes, "Your body is a temple for the Ruach HaKodesh who lives inside you, whom you received from G-d. The fact is, you don't belong to yourselves, for you were bought at a price. So use your bodies to glorify G-d" (v. 19-20, CJB). Sha'ul's words apply equally to men and women, for either gender may entrap or be entrapped in sexual sin.

Further Study: Jeremiah 1:1-5; Romans 12:2; 1 Corinthians 8:12

Application: How do you use your body and body language? Do you dress modestly and carefully so as to protect yourself and others not just from sin but from meditating upon sin? Each of us has a responsibility not only for ourselves but the effect that we might have on others. As Yeshua said, "Whoever causes one of these who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better to be tied to a millstone and thrown into the sea" (Mark 9:42).

© Jonathan Allen, 2008