Midianite

The Midianites were a nomadic people descended from Midian, a son of Abraham by his wife Keturah (Genesis 25:1-2), and thus distant kin to Israel. They ranged over the deserts east of the Gulf of Aqaba and through the Sinai and Transjordan, living as camel-herding traders and raiders. Their role in Israel’s story is strikingly mixed — at times allies and at times bitter enemies.

Two of the Bible’s great figures had early dealings with Midian. Joseph was sold by his brothers to passing Midianite (Ishmaelite) traders who carried him down to Egypt (Genesis 37:28). And Moses, fleeing Pharaoh, lived forty years in Midian, married Zipporah, and shepherded the flocks of the Midianite priest Jethro (Reuel), at whose advice he later organized Israel’s judges (Exodus 2:15-21; Exodus 18:13-24).

Yet Midian became a snare and an enemy. On the plains of Moab, Midianite (and Moabite) women enticed Israel into the idolatry and immorality of Baal-peor, bringing a deadly plague; for this the LORD commanded judgment on Midian (Numbers 25:1-9; Numbers 25:16-18), executed in the war of Numbers 31:1-12. In the days of the judges the Midianites, with the Amalekites and people of the East, oppressed Israel seven years, swarming in like locusts with their camels to plunder the harvests (Judges 6:1-6).

From that oppression came one of Scripture’s defining deliverances: with only three hundred men, torches, and trumpets, Gideon routed the vast Midianite host, for the LORD set the enemy’s swords against one another (Judges 7:19-22). “The day of Midian” became a byword for God’s sudden victory over the oppressor, recalled by the psalmist and by Isaiah’s promise that the yoke of the burden would be broken “as on the day of Midian” (Psalms 83:9; Isaiah 9:4). The Midianites thus stand in Scripture both as the place of God’s preparation of Moses and as a foe whose defeat displayed the LORD as Israel’s deliverer.