Numbers 31 · a question people ask
Why did the officers bring gold "to make atonement for our souls"?
The officers give only this reason themselves: "We have brought the LORD’s offering, what every man found: gold ornaments, armlets, bracelets, signet rings, earrings, and necklaces, to make atonement for our souls before the LORD" (31:50). It comes right after they report, "Your servants have taken the sum of the men of war who are under our command, and there lacks not one man of us" (31:49). Moses and Eleazar took it "into the Tent of Meeting for a memorial for the children of Israel before the LORD" (31:54). The chapter doesn't explain further, and readers take it in two main ways. Both agree it was given to the LORD, received by Moses and Eleazar, and kept as "a memorial" (31:54).
How Christians read it
Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.
The census ransom
Some read it by Exodus 30, the law for counting Israel: "each man shall give a ransom for his soul to the LORD when you count them, that there be no plague among them when you count them" (Exodus 30:12). The officers had just counted their men (31:49), and their words match that law's words: "to make atonement for your souls" and "a memorial for the children of Israel before the LORD" (Exodus 30:16).
Exodus 30:12 · Exodus 30:16 · Numbers 31:49-50 · Numbers 31:54
An offering for being kept
Others read it by what the officers say first: "there lacks not one man of us" (31:49). On this reading the gold is the officers' answer to that, brought from "what every man found" (31:50) as "the LORD’s offering" (31:50), and the chapter calls it "the gold of the wave offering that they offered up to the LORD" (31:52).
Numbers 31:49-50 · Numbers 31:52
The verses
“They said to Moses, “Your servants have taken the sum of the men of war who are under our command, and there lacks not one man of us. We have brought the LORD’s offering, what every man found: gold ornaments, armlets, bracelets, signet rings, earrings, and necklaces, to make atonement for our souls before the LORD.””
“Moses and Eleazar the priest took the gold of the captains of thousands and of hundreds, and brought it into the Tent of Meeting for a memorial for the children of Israel before the LORD.”