Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Numbers 31:15
And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive?
15 18. Commands to complete the destruction of the enemy. All male children and all women who are not virgins are to be killed in cold blood. This cruel command ascribed to Moses dates from an age when the Jews were approaching their narrowest and hardest state of exclusiveness, when piety consisted in rigid separateness from everything foreign. It need cause no difficulty to Christians who have received the command ‘Love your enemies.’
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
And Moses said unto them, have ye saved all the women alive?] Which either had been reported to him, or he concluded, by seeing so many with them; and this question is put, not for information, but by way of reproof, and as chiding them for what they had done; for they might have received orders from him to put them to death, when he sent them out; and if so, there was the more reason to be angry with them; or he might conclude they would have done this of themselves, knowing what instruments of mischief these women had been to Israel.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(15) Have ye saved all the women alive?It was the women, as is expressed in the following verse, who had been the cause, at the instigation of Balaam, of the apostacy of the Israelites; and consequently the command to avenge the Lord of Midiani implied the punishment of those who had been the instruments employed in the seduction of the Israelites.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
15. All the women In the gradation of guilt Balaam, Balak, and the princes were first as contrivers of the nefarious scheme to draw Israel into crime, and the women of Midian were second as the agents in its execution. Hence the indignant surprise of Moses that the latter had been spared when punishment for the past and security for the future demanded their death.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Num 31:15. Have ye saved all the women alive? See on chap. Num 22:9.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Num 31:15 And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive?
Ver. 15. Have ye saved all the women alive. ] By whom ye have so lately sinned, and so lately suffered! “Keep thee far from an evil matter,” Exo 23:7 Circa serpentis antrum positus, non eris diu illaesus, saith Isidore. We should take heed how we play about the hole of the asp, or near the den of the cockatrice. Isa 11:8 Sin and temptation come both under one name in the Lord’s Prayer. To pray, “Lead us not into temptation,” and yet to run upon the occasion of sin, is to thrust a finger into the fire, and then pray not to be burnt. These Israelites should have said to those Midianitish housewives, as those in Isaiah did to their idols, “Get you hence,” Avaunt; they should have here been as cautous as they were in other cases. For being forbidden to make covenants with the Gentiles, they also abstained from drinking with them, because that was a ceremony used in striking of covenants, and so it might have drawn them on thereunto. Our dallying with the occasions of sin, doth usually tempt the devil to tempt us.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Deu 2:34, Deu 20:13, Deu 20:16-18, Jos 6:21, Jos 8:25, Jos 10:40, Jos 11:14, 1Sa 15:3, Psa 137:8, Psa 137:9, Jer 48:10, Eze 9:6
Reciprocal: Num 25:1 – the people Num 25:18 – vex you Num 31:9 – General 2Ch 20:25 – precious jewels Pro 28:10 – causeth
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
31:15 And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the {e} women alive?
(e) As though he said, you should have spared none.