I composed this post on Thursday afteroon, but got delayed a bit in actually posting it, as I spent Friday afternoon reflecting on a very exciting week, rather than running to the computer to post this.

In Parshat Matot, the torah tells us in great detail the disposition of the spoils of the war against Midian (במדבר לא׃כה־נד), providing multiple reduntant counts of how the spoils were divided between the men who fought, the rest of the nation, and the kohanim. Why so much detail? Our clue is in Sifre in Parshat Balak.

"They conquered sixty cities [in Bashan], all fit to be the capitol of a kingdom, as it says ששים איר כל חבל ארגוב ממלכת בשן (Sixty cities, the entire region of Argob, the kingdom of Og in the Bashan דברים ג׃ד). And Israel came and makde war with them, and took all that was theirs, but when Israel became full from the booth, the soldiers wasted the spoils, tore the garments [they found], and killed the anmials, because they only wanted silver and gold vessels, as it says וכל הבהמ׳ ושלל הערים בזונו לנו (And all of the animals and spoils in the cities we looted for ourselves (דברים ג׃ז)."

The war against Og, King of Bashan, came after the war with Sihon, king of Heshbon. The Jews were filled up with the spoils from Sihon, and didn't feel they needed any more when they conquered Og. The Netziv explains the progression: the soldiers wasted the spoils, this was the beginning of the sin, they devalued the great kindness that Hashem did for them. They tore the garments, thereby transgressing the commandment of בל תשחית (don't waste/destory) and killed the anmials, thereby coming to cruelty to animals. Then end was that they came to idol worship and sexual immorality in the plains of Moav, with the incident of Ba'al Peor (מבדבר כה׃א־ט). The war against Midian was commanded to fix the sin of Ba'al Peor by destroying the nation that had enticed the Jews to sexual immorailty and idol worship. But since the root of this sin was their cavalier attitude toward the spoils of war, the Torah tells us that in this war they fixed up the root of that sin too, by giving us a meticulous accounting of the spoils of that war, that none of it was wasted.

It appears to me (and I found my words were confirmed by the Maharal's Gur Aryeh in Parshat Vayishlach) that the root of the commandment of בל תשחית (don't waste/destory) can be found that God gives us everything we need, and everything Hashem gives us is useful for us in our mission to serve him. By using not using it properly, we deny that we need everything that Hashem has given us, and we thereby do not use it for the mission that Hashem intended it.