Midian

Midian was the land and people of the descendants of Midian, a son of Abraham by his wife Keturah (Genesis 25:2), whom Abraham sent away eastward, apart from Isaac, into the desert country (Genesis 25:6). The Midianites were not a settled kingdom but a loose confederation of camel-herding, caravan-trading nomads who ranged the arid lands east of the Gulf of Aqaba in northwestern Arabia, spilling over into the Sinai and the fringes of Moab. It was a Midianite caravan, laden for trade with Egypt, that drew Joseph up from the pit and carried him into slavery (Genesis 37:28).

Midian's brightest hour was as a place of refuge and preparation. Fleeing Pharaoh, Moses came to Midian, defended the daughters of its priest Jethro at the well, married Zipporah, and kept the flock through forty hidden years (Exodus 2:15; Exodus 2:21). It was here, leading the sheep to Horeb, that he saw the bush that burned unconsumed and heard the call of God (Exodus 3:1); and it was Jethro the Midianite who later counselled him to appoint judges over the people (Exodus 18:1).

Yet Midian became also a snare and a foe. Its elders joined Moab to hire Balaam against Israel (Numbers 22:4), and at Baal-Peor a Midianite woman led Israel into idolatry and immorality, until the zeal of Phinehas turned away the plague (Numbers 25:8) and Israel took vengeance, slaying the Midianite kings (Numbers 31:8). Later, in the days of the judges, Midian crushed Israel for seven years with locust-like camel raids (Judges 6:1) until the LORD saved his people by Gideon and a mere three hundred men (Judges 7:7), the princes Oreb and Zeeb and the kings Zebah and Zalmunna all falling (Judges 8:21).

Midian is, above all, the wilderness where the meek are made ready and where God saves by the few. There the fallen prince of Egypt was remade into a humble shepherd fit to deliver Israel — a pattern of the greater Deliverer who would empty himself. "The day of Midian", when victory came not by numbers but by the arm of the LORD, became a byword for salvation and a sign of the coming Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:4). And the prophets foresaw even the camels of Midian streaming at last to Zion, bearing gold and frankincense in praise of the LORD (Isaiah 60:6) — the wealth of the desert nations gathered to Christ.