Midianites

“ As long as we remain in presumptuous self-confidence, the Midianites rest in possession; when we cast ourselves in earnest prayer at the feet of the Saviour, He maketh us more than conquerors.
We contemplated Faith, when last we met here, as the tree which in winter stands bare of foliage, black and leafless, yet with life within it. With Gideon now that tree had felt the warm breath of spring—the Lord had looked upon it, and the living sap had risen under the beams of the Sun of Righteousness ”

“ They slew all the males (v. 7) , that is, all they met with as far as they went; they put them all to the sword, and gave no quarter. But that they did not slay all the males of the nation is certain, for we find the Midianites a powerful and formidable enemy to Israel in the days of Gideon; and they were the Midianites of this country, for they are reckoned with the children of the east, Judg. vi. 3. (2.) They slew the kings of Midian the same that are called elders of Midian (ch. xxii. 4) , and the dukes of Sihon, Josh. ”

“ Midian has seduced Israel to idolatry and its constant companion, sensual sin. The old lawgiver has for his last achievement to punish the idolater. 'Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites, afterwards thou shalt be gathered to thy people.' So each tribe gives its contingent to the fight, and under the fierce and prompt Phinehas, whose javelin had already smitten one of the chief offenders, they go forth. Fire and sword, devastation and victory, mark their track. The princes of Midian fall before the swift rush of the desert-born invaders. ”

“ God would have the Midianites chastised, an inroad made upon that part of their country which lay next to the camp of Israel, and which was probably more concerned in that mischief than the Moabites, who therefore were let alone. God will have us to reckon those our worst enemies that draw us to sin, and to avoid them; and since every man is tempted when he is drawn aside of his own lusts, and these are the Midianites which ensnare us with their wiles, on them we should avenge ourselves, not only make no league with them, but make war upon them by living a life of mortification. ”

“ The Midianites, who were thus made an instrument of punishment to Israel, were, like themselves, descendants of Abraham, but by his union with Keturah. When Moses guided God’s people towards Canaan, the Midianites drew down vengeance on themselves by their too successful efforts to lead Israel into sin. ”

“ The greater part of this division was more exclusively the possession of the Midianites, or land of Midian; where Moses, having fled from Egypt, married the daughter of Jethro, and spent forty years keeping the flocks of his father-in-law: no humiliating occupation in those days, and particularly in Midian, which was a land of shepherds; the whole people having no other way of life than that of rearing and tending their flocks, or in carrying the goods they received from the east and south into Phenicia and Egypt. ”

“ The two tribes that suffered the hardest fate were Ephraim, and the part of Manasseh on the west of Jordan. For seven years the Midianites swept over their land every year, just at the time of harvest, and carried away all the crops of grain, until the Israelites had no food for themselves, and none for their sheep and cattle. The Midianites brought also their own flocks and camels without number, which ate all the grass of the field.
The people of Israel were driven away from their villages and their farms, and were compelled to hide in the caves of the mountains. ”

“ Again, when Israel took the Midianites captive, they were commanded to "kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him; but all the women children that have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves." ”

“ To each one amongst us to whom a present Saviour has been revealed by faith, the word of the Lord hath come as to the son of Joash. We may have rejoiced in the promise, but have we obeyed the command? Let us be honest with ourselves, my brethren; if the altar of Baal be yet standing, can we hope to drive the Midianites out of the land? Faith, if real, must appear in obedience; show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by my works, saith the inspired apostle. ”

“ Now if, as the parson said, all these enemies are most like to come, like the Midianites, to a soul where there’s been an idol set up, where was the idol in mine? You see, wife, pain and loneliness set an old man thinking.”
“You never had an idol,” said the wife; “in the midst of such a drunken, disorderly, quarrelsome set as we have here in Wildwaste, you took the pledge, and kept it too—never a drop of the poison wetted your lips; there’s not many a man would have kept steady, standing all alone as you did. ”

“ Midian, called nowadays by its inhabitants, as by the mediæval Arabic geographers, Arz Maydan, the Land of Midian, is that part of Arabia which occupies the east coast of the Gulf of Akabah, and extends some two degrees further to the south. The borders are somewhat difficult to ascertain, and it is probable that the ancient Midianites, like some of the larger and more powerful Bedawin tribes of the present day, wandered far and wide, and that their limits shrunk or extended according to their numbers, or the resisting power of their neighbours. ”

“ Gideon, the future deliverer of Israel, first appears before us in Scripture engaged in threshing corn beside the wine-press in order to hide it from the rapacious Midianites who held possession of the land. From the necessity of concealment he cannot employ, after the custom of the East, his father’s oxen to trample out the wheat; he must himself wield the flail with the strength of his own right arm. ”

“ Thus the sons of Keturah are the “incense-men,” not indeed inhabitants of the far south incense-land, but presumably the tribes whose caravans brought the incense to Palestine and the Mediterranean ports. So the Midianites appear in connexion with the gold and incense trade from Yemen (Isa. lx. 6) , and with the trade between Egypt and Syria (Gen. xxxvii. 28, 36) . They appear also as warriors invading Canaan from the eastern desert, and ravaging the land as similar tribes have done in all ages when Palestine lacked a strong government (see Gideon) . ”

“ The difficulties in the account of the subsequent flight of the Midianites appear to have arisen from the composite character of the narratives, and there are signs that in one of them Gideon was accompanied only by his own clansmen (vi. 34) . So, when the Midianites are put to flight, according to one representation, the Ephraimites are called out to intercept them, and the two chiefs, Ōrēb (“raven”) and Zeēb (“wolf”) , in making for the fords of the Jordan, are slain at “the raven’s rock” and “the wolf’s press” respectively. ”

“ Those who corrupted Israel on the high-place of Peor were Midianites in race.
The Midianites seem to have continued in occupation of Moabite territory for several generations. Reuben [pg 111] was enabled to pasture his flocks in peace in its valleys, and it is probable that it was not till Hadad, the King of Edom, "smote Midian in the plain of Moab" that Midianitish supremacy came finally to an end. It may be that Gideon's success against the Midianite oppressors of Gilead was one of the results of their overthrow by the Edomite prince. ”

“ God said, "will I save Israel, and deliver the Midianites into thine hands."
Gideon encamped, with his three hundred men, by the spring of Jezreel, on the slope of Mount Gilboa; while, on the north side of the valley, but farther down the descent to the Jordan, was drawn up the host of Midian.
From the height on which he stood Gideon could see the Midianites below, spread over the land like countless grasshoppers. Only three hundred weak men to face the wild Arabs with whom the valley was teeming! Would his little handful of followers indeed be able to [Pg 84] overcome them? ”

“ Did not the women of the Midianites, by their beauty, seduce from wisdom into impiety, through licentiousness, the Hebrews when making war against them? For, having seduced them from a grave mode of life, and by their beauty ensnared them in wanton delights, they made them insane upon idol sacrifices and strange women; and overcome by women and by pleasure at once, they revolted from God, and revolted from the law. And the whole people was within a little of falling under the power of the enemy through female stratagem, until, when they were in peril, fear by its admonitions pulled them back. ”

“ On the other hand, it may be observed that the Midianites mentioned here lived close to the Dead Sea, at a great distance from the Midian where Jethro lived, which was near Horeb. Perhaps they were a colony or tribe that had migrated from the vicinity of Mount Sinai. It seems that at this time the Kenites occupied a very strong position: Strong is thy dwelling place, and thou puttest thy nest in a rock ”

“ The name in Hebrew (Exod. iv. 18) is also written [Hebrew] (Yether) .
“My theory is this. Firstly, there is no dependence to be placed on the Masoretic points, especially when affixed to names of places. Secondly, we have no certain knowledge of the language used by the Midianites in those ancient times. Their territory extended northwards towards Palestine, and from their very intimate relations with the Israelites, as friends and as enemies, both nations appear to have understood each other perfectly. ”

“ The Midianites within must be conquered, and the might which conquers is from God. If disappointment blight our hopes, discontent fret our spirits, dissension [84] mar our peace, distrust shrink from expected trials, we must yet lift up our eyes unto the hills from whence cometh our help—we must yet ask, and we shall receive, the grace which can supply all our need, and enable us to rise above the infirmities of the flesh, the weakness of our fallen nature. Let us trust fearlessly, let us trust alone in the might of our Lord. ”

“ God confused the Midianites so that they started attacking and killing each other. Immediately, Gideon sent messengers to call many other Israelites to come from their homes and help chase the Midianites. They killed many of them and chased the rest of them out of the Israelites’ land. God caused 120,000 Midianites to die that day. ”

“ During the forty years of blessed peace, sickness and sorrow must have been known in homes of Israel, and faithful servants of God have wept over new-made graves. Such trials are crosses appointed by a heavenly Father—crosses which each and all must take up at some period of life, if life be not early cut short. But I am speaking [42] of troubles directly or indirectly brought on us by our sins: the Midianites who destroy our peace, and bring upon us miseries from which more earnest faith, more perfect obedience, might have preserved us. ”

“ Before leaving Makná I must give an account of its peculiar tribe, concerning which "The Gold-Mines of Midian"116 contained sundry inaccuracies. These men are not the "pauper descendants of the wealthy Midianites; they cannot boast of ancient race or of noble blood; and their speech differs in nothing from that of the Arabs around them. There can be no greater mistake than to suppose that they represent in any way the ancient Nabathæans. In features, complexion, and dress they resemble the half-settled Bedawin around them ”

“ There is something peculiarly striking in the fact that out of the many thousands of Israel, in the days of Gideon, there were only three hundred men who were really fit for conflict with the Midianites ”

“ As they were not of the doomed races of Canaan, the leader of Israel would have spared these foes, had they not been stained with the blood of his brethren, whom, by the Midianites’ own confession, they had slain at Tabor. Gideon was by law the avenger of this blood. The sacred record gives us a striking glimpse of the way in which justice was satisfied in that remote age—the brief investigation, and the prompt execution by the hand of the near of kin, according to the commandment of Moses: The murderer shall surely be put to death; the revenger of blood himself shall slay the murderer ”

“ The situation of the land of Midian, to which Moses fled, cannot be determined with certainty. The Midianites, who were descended from Abraham through Keturah (Gen 25:2, Gen 25:4) , had their principal settlements on the eastern side of the Elanitic Gulf, from which they spread northwards into the fields of Moab (Gen 36:35; Num 22:4, Num 22:7; Num 25:6, Num 25:17; Num 31:1.; Jdg 6:1.) , and carried on a caravan trade through Canaan to Egypt (Gen 37:28, Gen 37:36; Isa 60:6) . ”

“ Amongst these votive stones we picked up copper-stained quartz like that of ‘Aynúnah, fine specimens of iron, and the dove-coloured serpentine, with silvery threads, so plentiful in the Wady Surr. The Wasm in most cases showed some form of a cross, which is held to be a potent charm by the Sinaitic Bedawin; and on two detached water-rolled pebbles were distinctly inscribed lH and Vl, which looked exceedingly like Europe. Apparently the custom is dying out: the modern Midianites have forgotten the art and mystery of tribal signs (Wusúm) . ”

“ The change of subject in verse 28 which the traditional interpretation would require need not trouble us as such change of subject is not very unusual in the Bible. (See for instance Genesis 14. 19 to 20, 15. 13, 22. 7.) As for the identification of Midianites with Ishmaelites the fact is that racial names sometimes are extended to include other related races whom history has brought into close contact. The descendants of Hagar and Keturah are thus classed together in Genesis 25.6. ”