This is a very remarkable passage. The Lord says to Moses, “_Avenge the children of Israel_ of the Midianites,” and Moses says to Israel, “_Avenge the Lord_ of Midian.” The people had been insnared by the wiles of the daughters of Midian, through the evil influence of Balaam the son Beor; and they are now called upon to clear themselves thoroughly from all the defilement which, through want of watchfulness, they had contracted. The sword is to be brought upon the Midianites, and all the spoil is to be made to pass either through the fire of judgment or through the water of purification. Not one jot or tittle of the evil thing is to be suffered to pass unjudged. Now, this war was what we may call abnormal. By right, the people ought not to have had any occasion to encounter it at all. It was not one of the wars of Canaan; it was simply the result of their own unfaithfulness—the fruit of their own unhallowed commerce with the uncircumcised. Hence, although Joshua, the son of Nun, had been duly appointed to succeed Moses as leader of the congregation, we find no mention whatever of him in connection with this war. On the contrary, it is to Phinehas, the son of Eleazar the priest, that the conduct of this expedition is committed; and he enters upon it “with the holy instruments and the trumpets.” All this is strongly marked. _The priest_ is the prominent person, and _the holy instruments_ the prominent instrumentality. It is a question of wiping away the stain caused by their unholy association with the enemy; and therefore, instead of a general officer with sword and spear, it is a priest with holy instruments that appears in the foreground. True, the sword is here, but it is not the prominent thing. It is the priest with the vessels of the sanctuary, and that priest the self-same man who first executed judgment upon that very evil which has here to be avenged. The moral of all this is at once plain and practical. The Midianites furnish a type of that peculiar kind of influence which the world exerts over the hearts of the people of God—the fascinating and insnaring power of the world used by Satan to hinder our entrance upon our proper heavenly portion. Israel should have had nothing to do with these Midianites; but having, in an evil hour—an unguarded moment, been betrayed into association with them, nothing remains but war and utter extermination.