Psalms 106:28-31

106:28 They worshiped ¹  Baal of Peor,

and ate sacrifices offered to the dead. ² 

106:29 They made the Lord angry ³  by their actions,

and a plague broke out among them.

106:30 Phinehas took a stand and intervened, ⁴ 

and the plague subsided.

106:31 This brought him a reward,

an eternal gift. ⁵ 

¹ tn Heb “joined themselves to.”

² tn Here “the dead” may refer to deceased ancestors (see Deut 26:14). Another option is to understand the term as a derogatory reference to the various deities which the Israelites worshiped at Peor along with Baal (see Num 25:2 and L. C. Allen, Psalms 101-150 [WBC], 49).

³ tn Heb “They made angry [him].” The pronominal suffix is omitted here, but does appear in a few medieval Hebrew mss. Perhaps it was accidentally left off, an original וַיַּכְעִיסוּהוּ (vayyakh’isuhu) being misread as וַיַּכְעִיסוּ (vayyakh’isu). In the translation the referent of the pronominal suffix (the Lord) has been specified for clarity to avoid confusion with Baal of Peor (mentioned in the previous verse).

⁴ sn The intervention of Phinehas is recounted in Num 25:7-8.

⁵ tn Heb “and it was reckoned to him for righteousness, to a generation and a generation forever.” The verb חָשַׁב (khashav, “to reckon”) is collocated with צְדָקָה (tsÿdaqah, “righteousness”) only in Ps 106:31 and Gen 15:6, where God rewards Abram’s faith with a land grant.