Secondly, the accusation that these girls were for sex slave purposes contradicts what we know about the culture and about the event. But at least one of the writers above--to their credit--added the word presumably, realizing that the text doesnt actually say anything about it
1. Most girls were married soon/immediately after they began menstruating in the ANE (circa 12 years of age), and since infant and child mortality was so high, the average age of the girls spared would have been around 5 years of age or slightly lower (life expectancy wasnt a straight line, with childhood risks so high). Of all the horrible things ascribed to Israel in the OT, pedophilia is the one conspicuous omission. That these little kids would have been even considered as sex slaves seems quite incongruent with their ages.
And, at this tender age, they would not have been very useful as slaves at all! Children raised in Israelite households were put to work around this age, sometimes doing light chores to help the mother for up to four hours per day by the age of 7 or 8 [
OT:FAI:27], but 5 is still a bit young. Instead, the Israelite families would have had to feed, clothe, train, care, protect, and shelter them for several years before they could make much contribution to the familys existence and survival. [Also note that slavery in the ANE/OT generally means something quite different from New World slavery, which we normally associate with the world slavery, and most of what is called that in popular literature should not be so termed. See
qnoslave.html for the discussion and documentation.]
4. Even if we allow the age range to be older, to include girls capable of bearing children, the probability is that it was not sex-motivated, but population/economics-motivated, as Carol Meyers points out [The Roots of Restriction: Women in Early Israel,
Biblical Archaeologist, vol 41):
Beyond this, however, the intensified need for female participation in working out the Mosaic revolution in the early Israelite period can be seen in the Bible. Looking again at Numbers 31, an exception to the total purge of the Midianite population is to be noted. In addition to the metal objects which were exempt from utter destruction, so too were the young girls who have not known man by lying with him (Num 31:18). These captives, however, were not immediately brought into the Israelite camp. Instead, they and their captors were kept outside the camp for seven days in a kind of quarantine period. (Note that the usual incubation period for the kinds of infectious diseases which could conceivably have existed in this situation is two or three to six days [Eickhoff 1977].) Afterward, they thoroughly washed themselves and all their clothing before they entered the camp.
This incident is hardly an expression of lascivious male behavior; rather, it reflects the desperate need for women of childbearing age, a need so extreme that the utter destruction of the Midianite foesand the prevention of death by plagueas required by the law of the
herem could be waived in the interest of sparing the young women. The Israelites weighed the life-death balance, and the need for females of childbearing age took precedence. [/I][/FONT]
Excerpt from:
What about Gods cruelty against the Midianites
