Take the sum of the prey—both of man and beast— The goods and money called the spoil, Numbers 31:12 are not ordered to be divided, the warriors being allowed to keep these entirely to themselves. Indeed we find, Numbers 31:50, &c. that they made a voluntary oblation thereof. This prey was to be divided into two equal parts; one for those who went to the war, the other for the rest of the congregation. By which partition a far larger share, in proportion, was given to the warriors, who were but twelve thousand. This was but just; for they had hazarded their lives, which the others had not; yet they enjoyed some fruit of their brethren's labours, because they seem, from Numbers 31:3 to have been ready to fight as well as the others. The heathens, in the division of the spoil, acted nearly in the same manner. It was Cato's principle, that the generals, and great commanders in the army, were to be satisfied with the glory of a victory, and the inferiors were to have the whole booty. Scipio died poor after all his conquests, and the prodigious spoils which he must have found in so many noble cities, and such tracts of country as he had reduced. Plutarch gives us another instance of true military greatness in Themistocles, who, coming to view the dead bodies of the enemy after the victory, would not so much as take up any of the rich chains and bracelets with which the field of battle was covered. "Take you what you think proper," said he to one of his friends, "for you are not Themistocles." It is well known, that among the ancient Greeks the spoil was divided into two lots; the one for the general, the other for the army. See Potter's Antiq. b. iii. c. 13. The Romans in after-times administered an oath to their warriors, when they were to go upon a campaign or expedition, not to embezzle the booty which should fall into their hands; which as they divided into two parts, the one for those detached for action, the other for those who were left to guard the camp, they made by this wise law provision against avarice and rapine. See Polyb. Hist. lib. x.
Related Commentaries of Numbers 31:26
Numbers 31:26-27
26 Take the sum of the prey that was taken, both of man and of beast, thou, and Eleazar the priest, and the chief fathers of the congregation:
27 And divide the prey into two parts; between them that took the war upon them, who went out to battle, and between all the congregation: