This week’s parashah is a double portion, Matot–Masei. My focus today is on a story from the first of these, Parashat Matot, which opens with one of the most unsettling moments in the Torah: God commands Moses to “avenge the Israelite people on the Midianites” (Num 31:2). The ensuing war is brutal. The Israelite army kills every Midianite male, along with the women who had “known a man,” sparing only the young girls who had not. Balaam, the very prophet who, just chapters earlier, could only utter blessings over Israel, is also put to the sword. Read at face value, the text seems to present Midian as an unambiguously evil nation, worthy of total destruction.
And yet, elsewhere in the Torah, a Midianite is one of the most beloved figures in Moses’ life: Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, a priest of Midian, who welcomes the fugitive Moses into his home, gives him his daughter Zipporah in marriage, and later offers wise counsel that shapes the entire Israelite judicial system (Exod 2–3; 18). Jethro is not merely tolerated; he is honored. He recognizes God’s greatness, brings offerings, and eats with the elders “before God” (Exod 18:12). How can the same ethnic label, Midianite, be associated with both Jethro’s generosity and wisdom, and with the deadly threat described in Numbers 31?
The tension is not a bug in the Torah; it is a feature. The Torah is teaching us that identity labels like “Midianite” cannot be reduced to a single moral story. Being a Midianite does not mean one is evil. What matters is not ethnicity, but covenantal orientation: whose side are you on in the drama of holiness and corruption, blessing and betrayal?
The Torah itself gives us the key to understanding this war. Moses does not order the attack out of ethnic hatred or expansionist ambition. He frames it explicitly as retaliation for the Baal-Peor incident (Num 25), when Israelite men were drawn into sexual immorality and idolatry with Moabite and Midianite women. Numbers 31:16 makes this crystal clear: “These women, by Balaam’s counsel, caused the Israelites to be unfaithful to the LORD in the matter of Peor, so that the LORD’s people were struck by a plague.”
The war, then, is not against “Midian” in the abstract. It is against a particular coalition of Midianite leaders and actors who deliberately engineered Israel’s spiritual collapse. The text singles out the women who had “known a man” because they are identified as the agents of that seduction, the ones who had already crossed the line into corruption and were seen as an ongoing threat to the covenant community. The virgins are spared precisely because they are viewed as not yet implicated (Num 31:17–18).
In other words, the Torah is drawing a moral line not around an entire ethnicity, but around a specific act of covenant sabotage. Midian here is not a race; it is a role in a story of betrayal.
Now turn to Jethro. He, too, is called a “priest of Midian” (Exod 2:16; 3:1). But his story could not be more different. He does not seduce Israel into idolatry; he recognizes the God of Israel and rejoices in His deliverance (Exod 18:9–10). He does not corrupt Moses’ leadership; he strengthens it, advising the appointment of judges and the delegation of authority (Exod 18:13–23). He does not bring plague; he brings order.
Jethro’s presence in the Torah dismantles any simplistic equation of “Midianite = enemy.” The same label that, in Numbers 31, marks a lethal threat, in Exodus marks a wise and faithful ally. The Torah refuses to let us flatten an entire people into a single moral category. Midian, like any nation, contains both those who would destroy covenant and those who would build it.
This duality is painfully relevant for our own time. Our community, like the broader American community, is deeply divided. We live in an age of easy labels: “liberal,” “conservative,” “believer,” “secular,” “us,” “them.” It is tempting to assume that anyone who bears a certain label is automatically on the wrong side of history, morality, or God. The Torah pushes back. It insists that the critical question is not “What is your ethnicity?” or “What is your political party?” or “What is your background?” The critical question is: “What is your orientation toward holiness? Toward justice? Toward the covenant?”
In our polarized climate, it is easy to slip into a mindset where we see entire groups, whether defined by politics, religion, or culture, as monolithic enemies. The Torah’s treatment of Midian warns us against this. Just as there were Midianites who sought to undermine Israel and Midianites who sought to strengthen it, so too in our own society there are people within every group who work for justice and compassion, and people within every group who work for division and harm. The line between blessing and betrayal does not run between nations, parties, or communities; it runs through every human heart.
This week’s parashah does not invite us to demonize an entire people. It invites us to discern the specific actions and alliances that threaten the integrity of our community, and to act decisively against them. At the same time, it reminds us to remain open to the Jethros of the world: the outsiders who see God more clearly than we do, who offer wisdom that strengthens our institutions, who remind us that holiness is not the exclusive property of any one group.
Being a Midianite does not mean one is evil. Being a Midianite means being part of a complex human story in which some choose betrayal and others choose blessing. The Torah’s challenge is to cultivate the wisdom to tell the difference, and the courage to act accordingly.
In practical terms, this means:
- Resisting the urge to write off entire communities based on the worst actions of some of their members.
- Seeking out the Jethros in unexpected places: the people who, despite different backgrounds or beliefs, offer genuine wisdom and partnership.
- Confronting real threats to our shared values without letting fear or anger turn us into the very thing we oppose.
May we merit the discernment to recognize the Jethros among us, and the strength to confront the forces that would lead us away from the covenant.
