Numbers 31 - Twelve thousand men, 1000 from each of the tribes, are sent out by
Moses to attack the Midianites and
execute vengeance upon them in the name of the Lord. Phinehas is the priest of the campaign.
Every male is killed,
plus five kings, and Balaam--women and children are taken captive along
with other booty. They are taken to
Moses at his camp on the plains of Moab.
Moses becomes angry with the officers for their having spared
the lives of the women, “the very ones who on Balaam’s advice prompted the
unfaithfulness of the Israelites toward the Lord in the Peor affair, which
began the slaughter of the Lord’s community” (31:16). As a result, all the male children and all women not virgins are also
slain. It
doesn’t get much grimmer than this in the Old Testament narrative.
Then
the Israelites are instructed on purifying themselves, their clothes and all
their tools, weapons etc. Whatever can
stand the fire is to be purified in the fire.
Whatever cannot be purified by burning is purified in lustral
water. These are the constant modes of
purification throughout the scriptures. The
booty is divided and a tax levied on the warriors’ share. One out of every 500 people, beasts, oxen,
etc. are offered to Eleazar as a contribution to God.
Numbers 32 - In this chapter,
the Gadites and Reubenites request Moses
to permit them to stay on the east side of the Jordan where the grazing
land is good. [They were shepherds] At first Moses rebukes them for
discouraging the people from going over into the land God has given them. But then it is proposed that they just leave
their families here but the men will continue on to help the people as a whole
claim the land and they promise not to return until all the Israelites are in
possession of the promised land. So
Moses agrees.
Origen (185-254 AD)
De Principiis (First
Principles)
Book One
6 – Origen makes another
comparison. “Our eyes frequently cannot look upon the nature of the light
itself—that is, upon the substance of the sun; but when we behold his splendor
or his rays pouring in, perhaps, through windows or some small openings to
admit the light, we can reflect how great is the supply and source of the light
of the body. So, in like manner, the works of Divine Providence and the plan of
this whole world are a sort of ray, as it were, of the nature of God, in
comparison with His real substance and being. As, therefore, our understanding
is unable of itself to behold God Himself as He is, it knows the Father of the
world from the beauty of His works and the comeliness of His creatures. God,
therefore, in not to be thought of as being either a body or as existing in a
body, but as an uncompounded intellectual nature . . . mind, for its movements
or operations, needs no physical space, nor sensible magnitude, nor bodily
shape, nor color, nor any other of those adjuncts which are the properties of
body or matter.”
He
refers to the “simplicity of the divine nature” – uncomplicated by any mix of
matter or components of any kind.
7 – Origen delves
thoroughly into his analysis of the nature of “the mind.” We are still at a loss to explain the powers and special
qualities of the human mind. It will be
very interesting to see what comes of the recent initiative to study the human
brain in a manner as thorough as our study of human DNA. Origen would have a
problem embedding “mind” in the brain; but my sense of its rootedness in the
brain is not something that will undermine the tenets of Christianity as I see
them. Christ’s incarnation itself is a testimony to the union of physical and
divine.
“I
wish [those who see mind and soul as somehow “bodily”] would tell me . . . how
it receives reasons and assertions on subjects of such importance—of such
difficulty and such subtlety? Whence does it derive the power of memory? And
whence comes the contemplation of invisible things? How does the body possess the
faculty of understanding incorporeal existences? . . . How is it able to
perceive and understand divine truths, which are manifestly incorporeal?”
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