Midianite Stories

The Talmud often takes a story from the Torah and embellishes it to make a point.  I will do the same with the story of the Midianites, but I will do it twice.  Before reading my embellished versions, please read the original in Numbers 25 and Numbers 31:1-18.

Version 1:
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The Midianites were an odd nation.  They defined themselves matriarchally.  One was a Midianite if one had a Midianite mother.  It didn't matter how evil a person was, whether they violated Midianite laws or customs, or were completely ignorant of Midianite ways.  As long as a person had a Midianite mother, they were considered a Midianite.

In most nations, those who didn't fit with the laws and values of the nation simply left.  If they didn't leave, they were threatened with punishment until they did leave.  This kept most nations fairly uniform in their values.  But not the Midianites.  Because of their odd definition of citizenship, they varied greatly in belief.  Some Midianites wanted to maintain the old Midianite traditions.  These were the Orthodox Midianites.  And some rejected the old traditions and followed their base instincts instead.  These were the Liberal Midianites.  Because they lived together, the Orthodox Midianites developed customs to protect themselves from the corrupting influence of the Liberal Midianites.

One day a new nation appeared next to Midian, the Israelites.  Because the Israelites were a new nation, they had not yet developed cultural defenses against outside influence.  This made them more vulnerable to the Liberal Midianites than the Orthodox Midianites were.  The Liberal Midianites took advantage of this opportunity to spread their liberal message.  They used seduction, with the promise of easy sex for men in return for following their liberal ways.

The leader of the Israelites, Moses, was horrified.  He understood that the Midianites were corrupting and destroying his nation.  Moses only saw the Liberal Midianites because those were the Midianites who interacted with the Israelites.  The Orthodox Midianites kept to themselves and Moses didn't know much about them.  Moses recognized that the Liberal Midianites were a threat not only to the Israelites, but to all moral traditional cultures.  They were literally the scum of the earth.  Moses felt that they had to be exterminated to save humanity.

But Moses failed to recognize the distinction between Liberal Midianites and Orthodox Midianites.  In his eyes, all Midianites were Liberal Midianites.  Unlike Abraham who asked whether there were any good people in Sodom and Gomorrah before agreeing that these nations should be condemned to extermination, Moses did not ask this question.  So Moses attacked and killed most of the Midianites, both the evil Liberal Midianites and the good Orthodox Midianites without distinction.

Those Midianites who survived fled to neighboring nations.  They told these nations about the terrible Holocaust of the Midianites.  The other nations viewed the Israelites as the ultimate evil, racist against the Midianites.  And they promised to never forget the Holocaust and never allow Israelite thinking to ever be acceptable in civilized society.
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Version 2:
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Midian was once a virtuous nation.  But they had gone into steep moral decline.  Now they followed their base instincts to do evil.  Decent people in the land of Midian fled to another nation.  All who identified with the Midian nation were evil without exception.

One day a new nation appeared next to Midian, the Israelites.  Because the Israelites were a new nation, they had not yet developed cultural defenses against outside influence.  The Midianites were wealthier than the Israelites because the Midianites were an old nation that had accumulated wealth while it had been virtuous.  The Israelites were attracted by the wealth and the promise of easy sex for men of the Midianite culture.  The Midianites ridiculed what they considered to be the backward ways of the Israelites.  So many Israelites were embarrassed of Israelite culture and religion and embraced Midianite culture instead.

The leader of the Israelites, Moses, was horrified.  He understood that the Midianites were corrupting and destroying his nation.  Moses warned the Midianites to leave the Israelites alone.  But the Midianites rejected this.  They considered the Israelites ways to be irrational and a threat to the promise of world peace that could be achieved by spreading Midianite culture all over the world.  The Midianites insisted on educating the backward Israelites and many Midianites went to the Israelites to enlighten them.  Moses fought back with strict laws such as requiring all in Israel to obey the Sabbath, even the foreigners.  When the Midianites in Israel refused to obey these laws, Moses punished them.  The Midianites were outraged at the intolerance of the Israelites and attacked the Israelites economically and occasionally militarily for the Israelite "crimes" against the Midianites.

Moses recognized that the Midianites were a threat not only to the Israelites, but to all moral traditional cultures.  Moses felt that they had to be exterminated to save humanity.  Like Abraham who asked whether there were any good people in Sodom and Gomorrah before agreeing that these nations should be condemned to extermination, Moses considered this question regarding the Midianites.  Moses concluded that because Midian was a nation defined by culture, and that culture was pure evil, all members of that culture must necessarily be evil.  So Moses attacked and killed most of the Midianites.

By doing this, Moses saved humanity.  Most parts of the world, like China and the Americas, only rose and fell once.  This is because decadence won out in these societies and strong virtue never reappeared.  But strong virtue in the West was preserved in the Torah, and from this source the West was able to recover from decay multiple times, first through Islam which was based on a rewrite of the Torah (the Quran) and then through Puritan Christianity which faithfully followed the Torah in a Christian way.  If Moses hasn't wiped out the Midianites, Israel would have been corrupted and humanity would have no source of virtue from which to build new cultures resistent to the surrounding decadence.
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