Israel’s licentiousness in Baal Peor
1 Israel settled at Shittim and the men began to enjoy them selves with the Moabite women and to have sex with them.
2 These women invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods. There the people ate and bowed down before their gods.
3 The Israelites prostituted themselves to the god of Peor, so Yah weh’s anger flared against them.
4 He said to Moses, “Take all the leaders of these people and hang them in broad daylight before Yah weh, so that his fierce anger may turn away from Israel.”
5 So Moses told the Israelite judges, “Each of you shall slay any of your men who have joined in worshiping the Baal of Peor.”
6 Then a man, an Israelite, came back bringing a Midianite woman to his fa m i ly in view of Moses and the Israelite community while they were weeping at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting.
7 When Phinehas, a son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest saw this, he left the assembly, took a spear in his hand
8 and followed the Israelite into the tent. There he drove the spear through both the man and the woman. So the plague against the Israelites was checked
9 but those who had already died numbered twenty-four thousand.
10 Yahweh spoke to Moses,
11 “Phi nehas, son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, has turned away the blows of my anger from the sons of Israel, zealous as he was for me; he has defended my honor among you. Because of this, I did not feel zealous for my honor so that I should destroy the people of Israel.
12 Therefore tell him that I am making with him a covenant of friendship.
13 I grant to him and his descendants that they be my priests forever, because he was zealous for his God and made atonement for the sons of Israel.”
14 The Israelite slain with the Mi dianite woman was Zimri, son of Salu, a leader of a Simeon ite family.
15 And the name of the Midianite woman who was slain was Cozbi, daughter of Zur, a tribal chief of a Midianite family.
16 Yahweh said to Moses,
17 “Attack the Midianites and crush them,
18 for they have been your enemies, deceiving you with regard to Peor and with regard to Cozbi, their kinswo man, daughter of a Midianite leader, who was slain on the day of the plague because of Peor.”
After the plague, it happened that . . .
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Comments Numbers, Chapter 25
• 25.1 Sexual licentiousness is not without effect on people’s welfare. It is not merely a question of private morality, but it also seriously impedes social development insofar as it is related to the level of responsibility and capacity for self-sacrifice. In the Bible, the struggle against sexual immorality always goes hand in hand with faithfulness to God.
When the Israelites took over the land of Canaan, the pagan cults of that country were a constant temptation for them. One of the most common practices of these cults consisted in having relations with prostitutes consecrated to the god Baal. The pagan practice of sacred prostitution, severely condemned by the Bible, was still widely developed at the time of Paul, particularly in Corinth (1 Cor 6:16). As a lesson, we are told here that the people had already fallen into that sin at the time of Moses, and what the punishment was. To unite with a prostitute was to be united with the god Baal, and God does not tolerate such treason: a double prostitution, the physical one and the infidelity of a person betraying his Savior.
He was zealous for his God: he was not afraid of being called a puritan, a person with outdated ideas, and an intolerant mind. He did not resign himself to merely laughing it off and taking pictures.
• 14. Here conclude the ancient traditions referring to the time of Moses. Yet, in Deuteronomy 34, we find the remembrance of Moses’ death.
The numbers of this census on leaving the desert are no truer to history than those of the first chapter. But neither are they pure caprice. These numbers, taken separately, or as a whole, had a symbolic value and served as a pretext for religious teaching.