1. The Lord said to Moses:
2. Avenge the Israelites on the Midianites, and then you will be gathered to your people.
3. So Moses told the people, “Arm some men among you for the campaign, to attack Midian and to execute the Lord’s vengeance on Midian.
4. From each of the tribes of Israel you will send a thousand men to the campaign.”
5. From the contingents of Israel, therefore, a thousand men of each tribe were levied, so that there were twelve thousand men armed for war.
6. Moses sent them out on the campaign, a thousand from each tribe, with Phinehas, son of Eleazar, the priest for the campaign, who had with him the sacred vessels and the trumpets for sounding the alarm.
7. They waged war against the Midianites, as the Lord had commanded Moses, and killed every male.
8. Besides those slain in battle, they killed the kings of Midian: Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur and Reba, the five kings of Midian; and they also killed Balaam, son of Beor, with the sword.
9. But the Israelites took captive the women of the Midianites with their children, and all their herds and flocks and wealth as loot,
10. while they set on fire all the towns where they had settled and all their encampments.
11. Then they took all the plunder, with the people and animals they had captured, and brought the captives, together with the spoils and plunder,
12. to Moses and Eleazar the priest and to the Israelite community at their camp on the plains of Moab by the Jordan opposite Jericho.
13. When Moses and Eleazar the priest, with all the leaders of the community, went outside the camp to meet them,
14. Moses became angry with the officers of the army, the commanders of thousands and the commanders of hundreds, who were returning from the military campaign.
15. “So you have spared all the women!” he exclaimed.
16. “These are the very ones who on Balaam’s advice were behind the Israelites’ unfaithfulness to the Lord in the affair at Peor, so that plague struck the Lord’s community.