במדבר, פרק ל״א, פסוק כ״ה

The aftermath of the war against Midian required a careful and just distribution of the spoils, establishing a unique system of shared reward and spiritual gratitude. During the battle, the Israelites captured three types of loot: captives, livestock, and movable property. While each soldier kept the movable goods they found for themselves, the captives and livestock were brought to Moses to be divided into two equal halves. One half was given to the soldiers, and the other half went to the rest of the nation [אברבנאל].

This equal split was not based on the standard practice of dividing spoils between frontline fighters and those who stayed behind to guard the equipment, as the general public remained in the camp and did not serve as guards. Instead, the division reflected the fact that the entire nation sent these specific soldiers as their representatives. The twelve thousand fighters represented a ratio of one soldier for every fifty men out of the six hundred thousand Israelites. Therefore, the soldiers who risked their lives earned half of the spoils, while the nation that sent them and prayed for their success received the other half [אברבנאל].

From these spoils, the Israelites were commanded to set aside a portion for God. The soldiers were required to give a tax, a term signifying the act of taking and bringing in [הכתב והקבלה], at a rate of one out of every five hundred. This specific portion was given to Eleazar the priest, honoring Phinehas, who had led the military campaign using the holy vessels. In contrast, the general public was required to give a much larger share of one out of every fifty to the Levites, who guarded the Tabernacle. This specific ratio was established as a reminder that the nation had sent exactly one soldier out of every fifty men to the war. Furthermore, because the Levites regularly give a tenth of their earnings to the priests, the contribution the Levites received from the public was exactly ten times larger than the contribution the fighters gave to the priests [אברבנאל].

When the military campaign concluded, the army commanders approached Moses to express their gratitude for a great miracle: not a single soldier had died in battle. At the same time, they recognized a critical error. They had counted the soldiers individually without paying the required soul ransom, an oversight that could have triggered a plague. To atone for this unintentional mistake, they brought all the gold jewelry they had gathered as a voluntary offering to the Tabernacle. This act of atonement also served as a lasting warning for future generations against counting military personnel without providing a ransom [אברבנאל].