Numbers 25: No other gods before me...

Numbers 25: Worship of Baal of Peor

The narrative focus returns to the Israelites who are not exactly living up to God's expectations. Having put their trust in God, the Israelites were able to defeat King Arad, King Sihon, and King Og. And the section immediately before this showed God as extremely protective of his people, who are blessed three times by the Moabite Balaam.

Worship of Baal of Peor: Numbers 25
While at Shittim, the Israelite men have sexual relations with the Moabite women. This leads to the Moabite women inviting the men home to dinner and to sacrifice to their gods, namely the high God, Baal. The Lord is not happy about this, and commands Moses, "Take all the chiefs of the people, and impale them in the sun before the Lord, in order that the fierce anger of the Lord may turn away from Israel" (Num. 25.4). The Lord's anger is retributive, but at least the Lord does not threaten to abandon Israel, as the Lord has done before. No, the Lord only wants a sort of human sacrifice - not in the traditional sense of sacrifice, but more in the Christian Jesus-died-that-we-may-live sense, taking "living" to be life on earth. Moses tells the judges of Israel to kill any of their people that have "yoked themselves to the Baal of Peor."

Just then an Israelite comes by and leads a Midianite woman into his tent, right in front of Moses and the congregation of the Israelites. One can sense the ironic tension of the situation. Here is a man that has not heard the command walking to his own death hand in hand with the Midianite woman. The entire congregation comprehends the horror of what is about to take place - and the horror that awaits them too.

Phinehas son of Eleazar, son of Aaron sees this and sneaks off. He takes a spear and follows the Israelite man and Midianite woman into the tent. He kills the two in flagrante delicto, as evidenced by the fact that the spear pierces both the Israelite and the woman through the belly.

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Years from now, when all the locations
of CSI are exhausted, the producers
will be forced to go back in time.

But here we seem to have a mixing of traditions, because the writer informs us that the killing of the man and woman stops that plague that spreads throughout Israel. No plague was threatened before, but now clearly the Israelites have been afflicted - 24,000 die from it.

It was Phinehas' swift action that saved the Israelites from God's wrath. The Lord speaks to Moses and compliments Phinehas on "manifesting such zeal" so as to turn God's anger away from the Israelites. Therefore Aaron's family is granted God's "covenant of peace," a covenant of "perpetual priesthood" awarded for Phinehas' zealous defense of God that was so great it atoned for all of Israel.

The biblical author then gives the names of the slain lovers. The man is Zimri son of Salu, head of the Simeonites. The woman is Cozbi daughter of Zur, the head of a Midianite clan. Both were important members of their nations, which in hindsight makes their deaths all the more meaningful. It was not just any Israelite, but the head of an ancestral house, that sullied himself with the Midianite woman. Corruption extends to the leadership of Israel. Also, the death of Cozbi instigates something of a blood feud between the Israelites and the Midianites. Only it is the Israelites who are on the offensive, with the justification that Cozbi was a corruptive force.

Israel has done a lot to upset the Lord while in the wilderness, and many have suffered God's wrath. But as we shall see tomorrow, the new generation that enters the promised land will have nearly as many people as the generation that fled Egypt.