Zur Gave His Own Daughter and Scripture Wrote Him Third

The linen was cheap on purpose.

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Old women worked the front of the stalls at Shittim, calling prices at the men who came down from the Israelite camp, and the younger women sat inside on cushions with the fine weave across their knees. The price dropped every time a man reached out to feel the cloth.

Israel had come off the wars against Sichon and Og with more plunder than the desert had ever shown them, and had wrecked half of it hauling it home, slitting garments open and gutting animals for the silver and gold. Forty years of manna, then this. The camp sat at Shittim, one syllable from sitoth, straying.

The Markets Went Up at Shittim

A man bought the cloth. Then there was wine, Ammoni wine, the wine of idolators, not yet forbidden, so he drank it. Then the woman reached into her clothes, set a small figure of Peor on the mat between them, and said, "Bow to this first."

Peor took no incense and no blood. A man uncovered himself in front of the idol, and that was the whole rite. Men who had stood at the mountain and heard the voice did it for a jar of wine and a length of flax. Then came the invitations to the banquets, and more of them veered off from the Torah of Moses.

Rabbi Elazar ben Shamua said it in carpentry. Pull a nail out of a door and the wood comes with it. Nobody walked away from Peor clean. Something came away attached.

What Zur Handed Over

Midian had five kings, and Zur was not merely one of them. He was the greatest, head of the nations of a father's house, which meant the other four had sat lower than he did their whole lives.

When the plan reached the tents of Midian, the objection was practical. Hired women could be smelled out. A prince of Israel would not throw his name away on a girl from a market stall. The plan needed a daughter of the royal house, a father who could be named.

Zur went and got Cozbi.

No wife stands in the doorway of that tent. No priest of Midian objects that a princess is not merchandise. Zur walked his own daughter out of the royal quarter and gave her to the scheme, and the four lesser kings kept quiet, because a king who will spend his own blood is a king nobody wants across the table.

The Spear Went Through Both of Them

The plague began while the judges were still being told to hang the guilty in the sun. Israel was dying at the rate of a battlefield. Into that, in broad daylight, Zimri, a prince of the tribe of Shimon, took Cozbi by the hand and walked her through the camp toward the tent of meeting while his own tribe cheered. Shimon had decided it was being singled out, and Zimri was answering for all of them.

Moses had nothing to say. Pinchas, grandson of Aaron, picked a spear up off the ground and went in after the two of them.

The killing was not clean, and it was not meant to be. The two were held together on the iron so nobody could later claim it had been something else. Their mouths were sealed shut. The lintel of the tent lifted itself so the camp could see through the doorway, and Zimri was turned over on top of Cozbi so every man outside knew whose bodies those were. Pinchas carried them out through a crowd of Shimonites who wanted him dead and could not lay a hand on him. The dying stopped at twenty-four thousand.

Moses Asked to See It Before He Died

God gave Moses one more assignment. Take the vengeance of the children of Israel from Midian, and then be gathered to your people. The war was the last item on the list, and past it there was nothing but the mountain and the grave.

Moses did not stall the way he had stalled at the bush. He wanted this one. God does not withhold from a righteous man what he has asked to see with his own eyes, and what Moses asked for, at the end of a hundred and twenty years, was Midian brought to account and Balaam finished. Balaam had come to curse, failed, and sold Balak the market at Shittim instead. The righteous one rejoices when he beholds vengeance and washes his feet in the blood of the wicked. Moses was the righteous one. Balaam was the blood.

The Roll of the Slain Kings

Twelve thousand went out, a thousand from every tribe, Pinchas at the head of them with the vessels of the sanctuary. The five kings died. Balaam died by the sword the same day, still in Midian, still collecting on his advice for breaking a people who could not be cursed.

Then came the counting, which took far longer than the fighting. The captives were sorted by whether a woman was old enough to have gone down to the stalls, and the small girls were kept alive and led off into the camp of Israel. Out of that sorting the sages later drew a rule about a girl who enters Israel before three years and a day, and whom she may marry among the priests. A war about ruin produced a law about belonging.

And then the scribes wrote out the list of the kings who had fallen. Evi. Rekem. Zur. Hur. Reba.

Zur was the greatest king Midian ever had, and his name sits third, wedged between two men who had spent their lives seated below him. Nobody struck it out. Nobody wrote a word of judgment next to it. He was moved down two places and left there, in the middle of a list, forever.