© Charles Chandler

 

In the second year of their sojourn, they left Mount Sinai. Next the exiles encountered the Midianites. The story in Numbers appears to be a conflation of two separate episodes, with the one involving Balaam at Peor coming later, after they had settled in Moab. But before they got there, they first had to fight their way through the Midianites, who seem to have fought with the plague, for which they were all put to the sword.¹

 

Since Atenism had been officially outlawed, people loyal to the pharaoh would have refused to follow Hebrew hygiene & dietary laws, for fear of guilt by association. That would have left them more vulnerable to the epidemic of bubonic plague that was going around. In the battles that ensued, the Atenists were careful not to pick up the contagion from their non-observant adversaries. So they disinfected any articles they seized, with fire and/or boiling water, and they quarantined everybody who had participated in the battle for 7 days.²