Numbers 25--Baal Worship at Peor

Numbers 25
English Standard Version

Baal Worship at Peor
25 While Israel lived in Shittim, the people began to whore with the daughters of Moab. 2 These invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. 3 So Israel yoked himself to Baal of Peor. And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel. 4 And the LORD said to Moses, “Take all the chiefs of the people and hang them in the sun before the Lord, that the fierce anger of the LORD may turn away from Israel.” 5 And Moses said to the judges of Israel, “Each of you kill those of his men who have yoked themselves to Baal of Peor.”

6 And behold, one of the people of Israel came and brought a Midianite woman to his family, in the sight of Moses and in the sight of the whole congregation of the people of Israel, while they were weeping in the entrance of the tent of meeting. 7 When Phinehas the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose and left the congregation and took a spear in his hand 8 and went after the man of Israel into the chamber and pierced both of them, the man of Israel and the woman through her belly. Thus the plague on the people of Israel was stopped. 9 Nevertheless, those who died by the plague were twenty-four thousand.

The Zeal of Phinehas
10 And the Lord said to Moses, 11 “Phinehas the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, has turned back my wrath from the people of Israel, in that he was jealous with my jealousy among them, so that I did not consume the people of Israel in my jealousy. 12 Therefore say, ‘Behold, I give to him my covenant of peace, 13 and it shall be to him and to his descendants after him the covenant of a perpetual priesthood, because he was jealous for his God and made atonement for the people of Israel.’”

14 The name of the slain man of Israel, who was killed with the Midianite woman, was Zimri the son of Salu, chief of a father's house belonging to the Simeonites. 15 And the name of the Midianite woman who was killed was Cozbi the daughter of Zur, who was the tribal head of a father's house in Midian.

16 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 17 “Harass the Midianites and strike them down, 18 for they have harassed you with their wiles, with which they beguiled you in the matter of Peor, and in the matter of Cozbi, the daughter of the chief of Midian, their sister, who was killed on the day of the plague on account of Peor.”

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One of my friends says his sports team likes to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory because even if they get good and make it far some season, they always find some way to mess it up and ruin their season--like they just don't know how to win.  That's kind of how today's passage feels.  We've just come off of one of the high points (though it doesn't seem that Israel knew what God just said about them through the prophet Balaam), and while there may have been some time that passed the book of Numbers juxtaposes that message of blessing against another act of open rebellion by the people that incurs God's wrath.

The people lived for some time in their new home in Shittim and we see that the people begin to intermix with the locals and are led to idolatry (the worship of the false gods) and sexual immorality.  These two ideas are closely connected in the Bible as we'll see that the inward rebellion of idolatry which people wanting to worship gods of their own making and rebellion against God's Law is often expressed in the throwing off of all of God's boundaries that He has put up around sex--one man and one woman for one lifetime in the covenant of marriage made before God and men.  There are more specifics on God's good restrictions that He's going to give in both the Old Testament and New Testament, but what the people are doing here should bring us back to the sin that they committed at the foot of Mount Sinai where it says that the people wanted Aaron to make them a golden calf and their response was to "play" (Exodus 32:6) which is a euphemism for them committing all kinds of sexual sin.  The difference now is that they are having sexual relations with the very people that God has just cursed--who are working against the promises of blessings that God has for His people.

The word Baal that is used here is sometimes used generically (usually in its plural form) for the gods of the Canaanites, but can also be used to refer to a specific Canaanite deity that was seen as the god of fertility and harvest.  They saw this god as the one who would bring forth rain so that the crops would grow which is why we will see Elijah confront the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel later in the Old Testament saying that he should be able to respond by fire (send lightning from the heavens to destroy the sacrifice) if he was real.  Way in the future, the people of Israel are going to be divided and they are actually going to take the make golden calf idols again, but they are going to use them to worship Baal, and they would say that Baal and YHWH were one in the same to them.  God knows where all this is headed and He is infuriated by the shameful acts of idolatry and sexual immorality that the people who bear His name are committing with no shame--right in the open.

​God's response for this is that all the leaders of all the tribes who were tasked with the responsibility of protecting the people and keeping them from doing such things and executing the justice of the Law were to round up all the people involved in this from each their tribes and there was going to be a very public execution, because these people that were to be executed had yoked themselves to Baal of Peor.

Even after hearing all of this, there was a man who openly engaged in adultery (the passage seems to indicate that this man was married as it says he brought the Midianite woman into his tent in front of his entire family, which I would assume included his wife) and probably prostitution given the context of this passage as prostitution was one of the ways that the Canaanites "worshiped" their fertility gods and goddesses.  This was done so that apparently everyone saw it--maybe the man even made sure that everyone saw it as he wanted everyone to know how rebellious he was being in the face of the LORD's command that all engaging in such sin were to be executed.  This man was probably putting God and the Israelite leaders to the test to see if they would really follow through.

Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son Aaron, was filled with zeal for the LORD and while the Levites and priests were not known as being warriors in battle, we see several places in the Old Testament including this one where you do not want to mess with them.  They were supposed to defend the sanctuary and keep the people holy, and if they saw open sin and rebellion like this, and no one else would take care of it, then they were supposed to take care of it.  Since no one else was doing anything about it, Phinehas got up and got his spear and went in where the two of them were openly committing adultery and ran them both through with his spear--both the Israelite man and the Midianite woman.

Apparently God had sent a plague on the people during this time of open rebellion (we've seen that before) and this act of Phinehas to show that he and the priesthood were deadly serious about enforcing God's Law was what brought an end to the plague and likely to the rebellion, for now.  As I said before the Baals of this region as well as the sexual immorality of the people of this region will plague the Israelites for most of their history until the time of the Exile (and idolatry would still be an issue after that, but in a different form as they would have to deal with the gods of the Greeks and the Romans and the emperor worship of Caesar during the time of Christ and the Early Church).  In this rebellion alone, twenty-four thousand Israelites died because of their yoking themselves to Baal of Peor.

At the end of today's passage,  we seethe LORD recognize the zeal of Phinehas and give the priesthood to Phinehas and his sons (the LORD named him as successor to his father Eleazar the high priest).  The LORD will also command the people to be hostile towards all the Midianites, " for they have harassed you with their wiles, with which they beguiled you in the matter of Peor, and in the matter of Cozbi, the daughter of the chief of Midian, their sister, who was killed on the day of the plague on account of Peor.”  This is not an act that would be forgotten and will be referenced many times over in the Old Testament.  When you see Peor mentioned, it is menat to bring you back to this event and this place which was both a place of blessing (as this was the final place where Balaam stood to bless the people) and cursing (for this was the place that the Israelites engaged in open idolatry and sexual sin with the Midianites).

The offenders were also named in this passage--both were leaders among their people, which made this sin especially heinous and put both peoples at risk.  It's surprising that the LORD said that what Phinehas did was seen as making atonement and was not seen as manslaughter/murder.  It was a just execution in the eyes of the LORD as their was no doubt what was occurring, and the whole camp would have been guilty if no one had done anything as seeing sin and doing nothing about it was itself a sin, especially for the leaders of the people, especially the Levites, and especially the priests.  While we may be slightly mortified by what Phinehas did, the LORD says it was a good and godly thing that he did with a pure heart, with zeal for the LORD and a desire to protect the people that he was to watch over spiritually and to protect the name of the LORD and the integrity of the sanctuary (for none were supposed to come near the sanctuary who had been polluted by sexual sin or idolatry).