Numbers 31 is only one among several disturbing accounts of genocide (euphemistically "ethnic cleansing") that we will encounter in the Bible. God commands Moses to unleash the armies of Israel upon the nation of Midian - and wipe them out completely.
In our day and age, we tend to use a lot of colorful language. "We'll slaughter them!" "It was a massacre!" "Murder the bums!" And those are just metaphors describing our sporting events!
How different our modern-day mindset is from war - and particularly from ancient war. There's no use looking for the niceties of civilization when one side is meticulously exterminating another for purposes of survival. This is a lesson I pray that we don't have to learn some day soon in our struggle against ISIS.
In Numbers 31, however, it wasn't the "bad guys" who were doing the ethnic cleansing. It was God's people, on God's orders!
I have heard reasonable Christians take one of two approaches in reconciling passages like the slaughter of Midianite men, women, and boys in Numbers 31.
1. God's command was necessary for that day and age against particularly savage and brutal enemies in order to ensure Israel's survival. The ends justify the means, because Israel's was God's chosen vehicle to bring about Jesus, Who was destined to be become the Savior of the world. The time for such tactics, however, is long past.
2. The acts of genocide committed by Israel against its neighbors have nothing to do with us as Christians. It was another time, another place, another covenant, another people. We can reject what happened there as a repugnant relic of another world that fortunately no longer exists.
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