“The Rabbis who inherited the biblical story [of Numbers 31] as sacred writ…adopted the strategy of finding meaning in its details…”

The Rabbis who inherited the biblical story [of Numbers 31] as sacred writ (and could not, therefore, get rid of it) adopted the strategy of finding meaning in its details, while implicitly denying its character as a biblical mandate justifying slaughter.

Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, “The War Between Weapons And Words”, The Jewish Week (18 July 2014), 45.