Numbers25chapter 25

Numbers 25:1-2

Four chapters of oracles that could not be turned into a curse are followed by one invitation, and the invitation works. Numbers 31:16 says the counsel behind it was Balaam's, which chapters 22 to 24 never said, and Revelation 2:14 names the two things he taught Balak to set before Israel, food offered to idols and fornication. The order in these two verses runs from the women to the table of their gods to the bowing, so what starts as appetite ends in worship.

Numbers 25:3

The verb is a yoking word and the subject of the sentence is the whole nation, so what a number of men did is charged to Israel as one. Four later passages look back at this place: Deuteronomy 4:3 tells the next generation their own eyes saw what was done because of Peor, Joshua 22:17 calls it an iniquity from which we are not cleansed until this day, Psalm 106:28 says they ate the sacrifices of the dead, and Hosea 9:10 says they separated themselves unto that shame. Micah 6:5 sets Shittim in the same line as Balak's consulting and Balaam's answer.

Numbers 25:4-5

Two orders are given and they differ. God tells Moses to take the heads of the people and hang them up before the Lord against the sun, and Moses tells the judges to slay every one his men that were joined unto Baal-peor. Readers divide over who the heads are, with Jamieson, Fausset and Brown taking them as the principal offenders in the Peor outrage, and Adam Clarke reading the order as a charge to assemble the chiefs, hold an inquiry, and hang those found guilty. Deuteronomy 21:22-23 is the law that governs a body hanged on a tree, and it requires the body taken down and buried the same day.

Numbers 25:6

The woman is a Midianite where verse 1 named the daughters of Moab, and that difference is what verses 17 and 18 take up when the war is ordered against Midian. The act is done in the sight of Moses and of a congregation weeping at the door of the tabernacle, so a public grief is answered in public. Both names are held back until verses 14 and 15, and the text reports the deed before it reports the rank of the man who did it.

Numbers 25:7-8

Phinehas is Aaron's grandson and a priest, and he leaves the weeping assembly with a javelin in his hand. The word rendered tent in verse 8 is a rare one, and Matthew Henry reads it as a place fitted up for the act itself. Verse 8 ends by saying the plague was stayed, which is the first mention of a plague anywhere in the chapter, so the narrative reports the stopping of something it never reported starting. Psalm 106:30 tells it the same way, then stood up Phinehas, and executed judgment: and so the plague was stayed.

Numbers 25:9-10

Numbers gives twenty and four thousand and 1 Corinthians 10:8 gives three and twenty thousand, with Paul adding that they fell in one day. John Gill takes the larger figure to include the men the judges executed, and Albert Barnes reports the Jewish tradition that deducts from the total the thousand slain by their brethren. Numbers gives no span for its number and Paul limits his to a single day, and the two figures stand as written with the text settling nothing between them.

Numbers 25:11-12

The word behind zealous for my sake and the word behind my jealousy come from one root, so the man's zeal and God's jealousy are named with the same term. What is given him is called a covenant of peace, and Malachi 2:5 uses that pair of the covenant with Levi, my covenant was with him of life and peace. Albert Barnes and Adam Clarke both mark the deed as exceptional rather than a pattern, Clarke writing that it can never be a precedent on any common occasion.

Numbers 25:13

A man who used a javelin is said to have made an atonement, and the verb is the one used of what a priest does at the altar. The high priesthood runs in Eleazar's line through Phinehas, and Judges 20:28 still has him standing before the ark in the days of the judges. Adam Clarke reads the everlasting priesthood as pointing properly to the priesthood of Christ, shadowed by the priesthood under the law, whatever family carried the office. Zadok, who holds it from 1 Kings 2:35, is traced back through Eleazar and Phinehas at 1 Chronicles 6:4-8.

Numbers 25:14-16

The names come after the act, and both belong to ruling houses. Zimri is a prince of a chief house among the Simeonites, and Cozbi is the daughter of Zur, whom Numbers 31:8 lists among the five kings of Midian killed in the war this chapter orders. Simeon numbered fifty nine thousand three hundred at Numbers 1:23 and twenty two thousand two hundred at Numbers 26:14, the largest decrease of any tribe between the two counts, and Numbers draws no line between that figure and this chapter.

Numbers 25:17-18

The war is ordered against Midian while verse 1 named the daughters of Moab, and verse 18 gives the ground as the wiles by which they beguiled Israel in the matter of Peor. Moab is handled another way, since Deuteronomy 23:3-6 shuts the Moabite out of the congregation and names the hiring of Balaam in the same breath. The order given here is carried out in Numbers 31, and verse 16 of that chapter is where the counsel is finally traced to Balaam.