Today we begin Numbers Chapter 21.
For the Complete Jewish Bible, click here.
For the King James version, click here.
“And when king Arad the Canaanite, which dwelt in the south, heard tell that Israel came by the way of the spies; then he fought against Israel, and took some of them prisoners. And Israel vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, If thou wilt indeed deliver this people into my hand, then I will utterly destroy their cities. And the Lord hearkened to the voice of Israel, and delivered up the Canaanites; and they utterly destroyed them and their cities: and he called the name of the place Hormah.”-Numbers 21:1-3
After mourning Aaron’s death for 30 days, Israel is now on the move again.
At this point in Scripture, there’s something important you need to understand.
It was no secret to the indigenous people of Canaan that Israel was going to attempt to invade their land.
As a result, Israel’s every movement was being carefully monitored and you had best believe that every Canaanite state-nation in the area had sent out spies for the sole purpose of tracking Israel’s whereabouts on a day-to-day basis.
There is just no way you can hide the movements of 3 million people.
The Canaanites had their eyes glued like hawks to this ragtag mob of Hebrew wanderers.
In a nutshell, this was Israel’s current situation.
You’ve got one nation (Israel) who on the orders of their mighty God is planning to attack and take over pretty much a whole continent (Canaan) consisting of several state-nations.
And in return the state-nations were well aware of Israel’s intentions and they were also well aware of what had happened in Egypt about 40 years ago.
To say the situation was tense would have been an understatement of gargantuan proportions.
Nerves were about to crack and right off the bat from the very first verse of Numbers chapter 21, we’re told of an unnamed Canaanite king ruling over an area called Arad who decides he’s not going to sit around and wait for the Hebrews to attack his country.
He decides to launch a preemptive strike against Israel.
Unfortunately, Israel is still in its baby stage when it comes to waging war and we’re told this early battle did not go well.
Arad’s forces gain the upper hand and they take a couple of Israelites hostage.
Now it’s what Israel does next that we should pay careful attention to.
In response to the trouble that has occurred, the whole community turns to God for help and makes a vow.
The vow is that if God will give them the victory over the King of Arad and his nation, they will utterly “destroy” the enemy and their cities.
Okay, this is where practically every English Bible offers up a misleading translation from the original Hebrew.
Let’s take a close look at verse 2.
“And Israel vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said,
If thou wilt indeed deliver this people into my hand,
then I will utterly destroy their cities.“
Here’s the thing.
The vow was NOT that Israel would “destroy cities and people“.
A more accurate translation from the original Hebrew should say “put them under the ban“.
The Hebrew word for “ban” is HEREM.
In other words, the vow the Israelites made to the Lord was if they were granted victory, they would not loot the goods for themselves but treat them as banned.
They would instead offer up the cities, the people, and the cities’ valuables to the Lord.
They would practice a significant act of self-denial.
According to the war customs of that era, whenever an enemy city was taken over, the soldiers were permitted by their commanders to loot the area and help themselves to as many valuables as they could carry back home.
Those valuables were considered to be the soldiers’ pay for their service to their nation.
However, in this case, in exchange for God’s supernatural power to gain victory, the Israelites vowed to God that instead of taking the booty of the enemy for themselves, they would instead offer it up to God.
Since God is a spirit being and is not going to literally receive material things, the process by which the booty is offered to God is by destroying and burning it up.
That’s probably why the translators rendered HEREM as “destroy“.
But that’s NOT what HEREM means.
It means to “put a ban on“.
Keep this word HEREM in mind because it will play a VERY, VERY, VERY significant role in understanding those significant parts of Scripture that just fly over most gentile scholars’ heads, especially those passages where God calls for the destruction of every man, woman and child.
Such commands, though jarring to our modern sensitivities, have everything to do with God’s HOLINESS and the Principle of HEREM.
And again, congratulations, at this stage your knowledge of Scripture has probably just surpassed the level of most church pastors anywhere FOREVER!
The ESV uses the word “devote” and the French Louis Segond used the verb “devouer”, which is similar. I’ve understood this to mean “to set apart exclusively”, often, but not always involving destruction, as in the case of Jericho. I have heard a pastor try ” to save Jepthah’s daughter”, by saying it doesn’t necessarily mean destroy (not convincing to me, sadly. I hope the majority of pastors are better educated than you suggest. You did say “anywhere” which is.a lot of pastors!
Thanks for reading Rob. Yes, I my phrasing can admittedly be a bit bombastic at times. However, I have yet to meet a pastor who understood HEREM. (Oops! Another bombastic statement.)