Numbers 25:4-5

God’s Punishment

25:4 The Lord said to Moses, “Arrest all the leaders ¹  of the people, and hang them up ²  before the Lord in broad daylight, ³  so that the fierce anger of the Lord may be turned away from Israel.” 25:5 So Moses said to the judges of Israel, “Each of you must execute those of his men ⁴  who were joined to Baal-peor.”

Numbers 25:2

25:2 These women invited ⁵  the people to the sacrifices of their gods; then the people ate and bowed down to their gods. ⁶ 

Numbers 19:7

19:7 Then the priest must wash ⁷  his clothes and bathe himself ⁸  in water, and afterward he may come ⁹  into the camp, but the priest will be ceremonially unclean until evening.

[25:4]  ¹ sn The meaning must be the leaders behind the apostasy, for they would now be arrested. They were responsible for the tribes’ conformity to the Law, but here they had not only failed in their duty, but had participated. The leaders were executed; the rest of the guilty died by the plague.

[25:4]  ² sn The leaders who were guilty were commanded by God to be publicly exposed by hanging, probably a reference to impaling, but possibly some other form of harsh punishment. The point was that the swaying of their executed bodies would be a startling warning for any who so blatantly set the Law aside and indulged in apostasy through pagan sexual orgies.

[25:4]  ³ tn Heb “in the sun.” This means in broad daylight.

[25:5]  ⁴ tn Heb “slay – a man his men.” The imperative is plural, and so “man” is to be taken collectively as “each of you men.”

[25:2]  ⁵ tn The verb simply says “they called,” but it is a feminine plural. And so the women who engaged in immoral acts with Hebrew men invited them to their temple ritual.

[25:2]  ⁶ sn What Israel experienced here was some of the debased ritual practices of the Canaanite people. The act of prostrating themselves before the pagan deities was probably participation in a fertility ritual, nothing short of cultic prostitution. This was a blatant disregard of the covenant and the Law. If something were not done, the nation would have destroyed itself.

[19:7]  ⁷ tn The sequence continues with the perfect tense and vav (ו) consecutive.

[19:7]  ⁸ tn Heb “his flesh.”

[19:7]  ⁹ tn This is the imperfect of permission.