Numbers 25

Updated
2001-05-26; 14:32:28utc

J. Failure with the Moabites 25:1-18

This chapter describes Israel's seduction by Moab, and God's judgment upon those that sinned. It is in fact, what our heading calls "Israel's failure with the Moabites. The whole episode is commemorated in the psalms, in which we read: "They yoked themselves to the Baal of Peor and ate sacrifices offered to lifeless gods; they provoked the LORD to anger by their wicked deeds, and a plague broke out among them. But Phinehas stood up and intervened, and the plague was checked. This was credited to him as righteousness for endless generations to come."[ 1 ]

As we mentioned before, the plot to seduce Israelites by using temple prostitutes who invited them for a meal at the temple, originated with Balaam. This piece of key information is omitted in this chapter, but when Israel finally takes revenge upon the Moabites and Midianites and the army captures some of the women and keeps them alive, Moses says: "They were the ones who followed Balaam's advice and were the means of turning the Israelites away from the LORD in what happened at Peor, so that a plague struck the LORD's people."[ 2 ] Evidently, a lot of details are left out, suggesting that that is a page of shame in Israel's history, which is better written in as brief a form as possible. It is difficult to understand why The Pulpit Commentary suggests at this point: "This commencement of sin seems to have been made by Israel without special provocation.[ 3 ] The very victories won, and the comparative ease and affluence now enjoyed, after long marches and hardships, may well have predisposed them to this sin, for which they now for the first time found abundant opportunity." The Commentary completely disregards "Balaam's advice" in this carefully laid plot. It is true, however, that man is often most vulnerable to temptation after victories have been won.

It seems strange that Balaam's role in this event is never even mentioned in this chapter; we can only find out about it by piecing various scattered fragments of information together. Evidently, the point Moses wants to make in recounting this story is not Israel's failure, but Phinehas' role in the restoration of the nation's testimony. In giving testimony about episodes of sin in our lives, it is good policy to be brief about the details of our failure and to put the full emphasis on the restoration the Lord brings about.

Balaam's plan indicates that Balaam was a good psychologist. He knew that Israel's resistance to certain forms of temptation would be very low. The enticement probably came in the form of a dinner invitation. For people who for forty years had lived on manna and water, such a temptation would be more than "what is common to man," and people were "tempted beyond what they could bear," to use the words of the Apostle Paul.[ 4 ] The initial invitation probably did not contain any suggestion of sex and idolatry. The Israelites would only have to come and stare at tables full of food, such as they had never seen in their lives. Once their resistance was weakened, the rest would be easy. These men, who had lived in the desert for forty years, were probably not used to alcohol, and the excellent wine that was served must have made the task for Moab easy. Nobody will have guessed, in the early stages, that the demon Baal of Peor was waiting for them around the corner. Balaam had guessed right.

His comprehension about the character of God was correct also. He understood that if those men could be led into idol worship, even if they were drunk when they yielded, the result would be equally destructive as a curse pronounced over them. The divine protection over them would be torn. He knew God's standard of right and wrong.

The event is reported in a very sober way: "While Israel was staying in Shittim, the men began to indulge in sexual immorality with Moabite women, who invited them to the sacrifices to their gods. The people ate and bowed down before these gods. So Israel joined in worshipping the Baal of Peor. And the LORD's anger burned against them." The satisfaction of those men's appetites led straight into the arms of one of the worst idols of that time, and to the one who was behind the idol: Satan.

The Pulpit Commentary suggests that the Baal of Peor was a god that required rites of obscenity, and that Peor "was the distinguishing name of Baal or Chemosh when worshipped as the god of reproduction with the abominable rites proper to this cultus."

Appetite for good food, and fulfillment of sexual desires is not, in itself, sinful, but we have to be careful as to how we satisfy our desires. If our bodies, instead of our spirits, dictate our behavior to us, we are going along a dangerous path. People who have never dedicated their bodies to the Lord have no resistance against demonic temptations in the physical realm. That is the reason Paul urges us: "to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God-- this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is-- his good, pleasing and perfect will."[ 5 ] The Apostle also spells out what the function of our bodies should be in our relationship with the Lord. He writes to the Corinthians: " 'Food for the stomach and the stomach for food'-- but God will destroy them both. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, 'The two will become one flesh.' But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit. Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body."[ 6 ] Paul does not mention demonic involvement at this point, probably because it was general knowledge that all prostitution was related to idol worship. There was no secular prostitution, as we know it now. Actually, prostitution is never secular!

The burning of God's anger meant that some kind of plague erupted among the people, and the anger was also demonstrated in the punishment God wanted Moses to carry out. Whether the word "the plague" means that people died with the bubonic plague, or by some other kind of disaster, is not clearly spelled out. The verdict was that the leaders of the people had to be executed. The Pulpit Commentary takes this to mean all the heads of the people, as the phrase reads in the KJV, regardless of whether they participated in this sin or not. We read: "…the chiefs, who ought to have prevented, and might have prevented, this monstrous irregularity, but who seem, if we may judge from the case of Zimri, to have countenanced it. The mere neglect of duty in so gross a case was reason enough for summary execution." It seems hard to accept, though, that God would condemn to death those who had not themselves actively participated in this sinful behavior. The NIV, with its rendering : "The LORD said to Moses, 'Take all the leaders of these people, kill them and expose them in broad daylight before the LORD, so that the LORD's fierce anger may turn away from Israel,' " seems to suggest that "all the leaders of these people" who committed the sin are meant. The following verse, vs. 5, bears out this supposition. The fact that two different words are used, "leaders" in vs. 4, and "judges" in vs. 5 also confirms this interpretation. The execution was probably done, either by stoning, or with the sword, with subsequent hanging of the bodies in public display. The Pulpit Commentary's suggestion that the leaders would have been killed by impalement or crucifixion, seems unbelievable. Each clan leader, which is called "judge" here, was responsible for meting out justice within his own jurisdiction.

All this is recounted in brief to come to the point of the story, which is the behavior of Aaron's grandson, Phinehas. One of the offenders is a certain Zimri from the tribe of Simeon. He carried the offense even further than the others who had been involved in this affair, in bringing the Midianite woman into the Israelite camp and taking her into his tent. We get the impression that the greater part of the nation was in a state of shock, otherwise Zimri would not have been able to carry out this act of defiance publicly. Phinehas' reaction in seeing what happened was fierce anger. He followed the couple in their tent and killed them both with his spear. It appears that the killing of both was done with one spear thrust and that, therefore, the couple was probably in intimate embrace at the moment they were killed. They died in their sin, and appeared before the judgment seat of God, so to speak, as "one flesh." One shudders at the thought that some people die in the act of committing sin, and are, as it were, whisked away before the throne of judgment with all the evidence of their crime. We have to remember that Zimri's sin was more than a satisfying of his sexual lust. The sexual sin in this chapter was connected to the worship of Satan.

God created man as a sexual being, as male and female, to be able to give physical expression to a spiritual relationship. The key to the mystery is found in Paul's writing: " 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.' This is a profound mystery-- but I am talking about Christ and the church."[ 7 ] Satan has thrown his fiercest attacks against God in the effort to pervert man's sexual behavior, so that it would not longer be the expression of God's mystery in man, but the mere fulfillment of a physical desire. He has had overwhelming success on this point, and in the case of Zimri he scored one hundred percent.

Phinehas seems to have understood the issue, its source, and portent, better than anyone else among the people. He may not have been aware of Balaam's role in the event at this point, but he must have grasped that what Zimri, and some of the other men who had been seduced, had done went against the core of Israel's reason for existence. If unpunished, it would have brought about the curse Balak had been seeking to put upon Israel. Being the grandson of Aaron, and the eventual successor in the high-priestly office, he had tasted the holiness of God, and recognized, therefore, immediately the attack upon God's holiness when he saw it. That is the reason that God singled him out for a special recognition, although he, certainly, was not the only one who had executed people involved in the Baal of Peor case. God recommended Phinehas for the zeal he demonstrated for God's honor, which, in God's own words, equaled God's own zeal. The Hebrew says literally: "while he was zealous with my zeal."

The Pulpit Commentary has a rather lengthy, and very profound NOTE ON THE ZEAL OF PHINEHAS at the end of this section, from which we quote some portions: "The act of Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, in slaying Zimri and Cosbi is one of the most memorable in the Old Testament; not so much, however, in itself, as in the commendation bestowed upon it by God. It is unquestionably surprising at first sight that an act of unauthorized zeal, which might so readily be made (as indeed it was made) the excuse for deeds of murderous fanaticism, would be commended in the strongest terms by the Almighty; that an act of summary vengeance, which we find it somewhat hard to justify on moral grounds, should be made in a peculiar sense and in a special degree the pattern of the great atonement wrought by the Savior of mankind; but this aspect of the deed in the eyes of God by its very unexpectedness draws our attention to it, and obliges us to consider wherein its distinctive religious character and excellence lay."

The commentary proceeds to draw various parallels between Phinehas' act of atonement and other particular acts carried out by men in office and privately: such as Aaron's atonement for the people when he stood between the living and the dead in ch. 16:46-48, and also Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac. The commentary quotes Ps. 105, where we read: "But Phinehas stood up and intervened, and the plague was checked. This was credited to him as righteousness for endless generations to come."[ 8 ] From James' epistle on Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac,[ 9 ] where we read that Abraham's obedience was credited to him as righteousness,[ 10 ] the line is drawn between Phinehas and Abraham on account of the righteousness that was credited to both of them.

In speaking of the atonement Phinehas brought about, the commentary says: "What he did was not done officially (for he held no office), nor was it done by command (for the offenders were not under his jurisdiction as judge), nor in fulfillment of any revealed law or duty (for no blame would have attached to him if he had let it alone), and yet it had the same effect in staying the plague as the act of Aaron when he stood between the living and the dead with the hallowed fire in his hand (see on ch. xvi. 46-48). Of both it is said that 'he made an atonement for the people,' and so far they both appear as having power with God to turn away his wrath and stay his avenging hand. But the atonement made by Aaron was official, for he was the anointed high priest, and, being made with incense from the sanctuary, it was made in accordance with and upon the strength of a ceremonial law laid down by God whereby he had bound himself to exercise his Divine right of pardon. The act of Phinehas, on the contrary, had no legal or ritual value; there is no power of atonement in the blood of sinners, nor had the death of 24,000 guilty people had any effect in turning away the wrath of God from them that survived. It remains, therefore, a startling truth that the deed of Phinehas is the only act neither official nor commanded, but originating in the impulses of the actor himself, to which the power of atoning for sin is ascribed in the Old Testament.… Again, the act of Phinehas merited the highest reward from God, a reward which was promised to him in the most absolute terms. Because he had done this thing he should have God's covenant of peace, he and his seed after him, even the covenant of an everlasting priesthood. This promise must mean that he and his seed should have power with God for ever to make peace between heaven and earth, and to make reconciliation for the sins of the people; and, meaning this, it is a republication in favor of Phinehas, and in more absolute terms, of the covenant made with Levi as represented by Aaron (see on Mal. ii. 4,5). Nor is this all. In Ps. cvi. 31 it is said of his deed that 'it was counted unto him for righteousness unto all generations for evermore.' This word 'counted' or 'imputed' is the same … which is used of Abraham in Gen. xv. 6, and the very words of the Septuagint here … are applied to the obedience of Abraham in James ii. 23. It appears then that righteousness was imputed to Phinehas, as to the father of the faithful, with this distinction, that to Phinehas it was imputed as an everlasting righteousness, which is not said of Abraham. Now if we compare the two, it must be evident that the act of Phinehas was not, like Abraham's an act of self-sacrificing obedience, nor in any special sense an act of faith. While both acted under the sense of duty, the following of duty in Abraham's case put the greatest possible strain upon all the natural impulses of mind and heart; in the case of Phinehas it altogether coincided with the impulses of his own will. If faith was imputed to Abraham for righteousness, it is clear that zeal was imputed to Phinehas for righteousness for evermore. This being so, it is necessary in the second place to point out that the act in question (like that of Abraham in sacrificing his son) was distinctly one of moral virtue according to the standard then Divinely allowed. An act which was in itself wrong, or of doubtful rectitude, could not form the ground for such praise and promise, even supposing that they really looked far beyond the act itself."

In questioning the morality of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, and of Phinehas act of revenge, the commentary touches upon the paradox of faith, as Soren Kierkegard expounds in his profound treatise entitled Fear and Trembling. Was Abraham a hero of faith, he asks, or was he a murderer? The same question could be asked about Phinehas act of revenge. The Pulpit Commentary states very correctly: "Now it is clear (1) that under no circumstances would a similar act be justifiable now; (2) that no precedent could be established by it then."

The commentary proceeds by drawing conclusions from Phinehas' act to the doctrine of atonement. We read: "The act of Phinehas stands, in some respects upon a higher level than all the types and shadows of the cross which had gone before; being neither an act of submission to a definite command, like the sacrifice of Isaac, nor a piece of ordered ritual, like the sending forth of the goat for Azazel; but a spontaneous deed, having a moral value of its own. Partly at least for the sake of what it was, not merely what it showed in a figure, it was accepted as an atonement for the sin of Israel (which was very gross), and was imputed to its author for an everlasting righteousness. Phinehas, therefore, in one very important sense, would seem to bear a stronger resemblance to our Lord in his atoning work than any other person in the Old Testament. It may therefore be submitted that we must seek the truest ground of the atonement wrought by Christ not in the simple fact of the passion and death of the God-man, nor in the greatness or value of his sufferings as such; but in that zeal for God, that Divine indignation against sin as the opposite of God, that consuming desire to cause it to cease, which first animated the life of the Redeemer, and then informed his death. Phinehas in his measure, and according to his lights, was governed by the same Spirit, and surrendered himself to the prompting of the same Spirit, by which Christ offered himself without spot unto God. And that Spirit was the Spirit of a consuming zeal, wherein our Lord hastened with an entire eagerness of purpose (Luke xii. 50; John ii. 17; xii. 27, 28, &c.) to 'condemn sin in the flesh' and so to glorify God, and to accomplish the object of his mission (Rom. viii. 3), not by the summary execution of individual sinners, but after an infinitely higher fashion, by the sacrifice of himself as the representative of the whole sinful race."

Phinehas' act was an act of anger, which in itself would be something to be frowned upon. We tend to think that all anger is negative and sinful. The Bible teaches that some anger is positive and holy. In Ezekiel's days God said: "I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found none."[ 11 ] It seems that, at this point in history, God found such a man in Phinehas.

The above remarks on the subject by The Pulpit Commentary give a very profound insight in the incident described in this chapter. We tend to stare at Christ's sacrifice of atonement for sin, only from the angle of the prophecy of Isaiah and the words of John the Baptist. "He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth."[ 12 ] And, "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!"[ 13 ] It was not meekness alone that brought Christ to the cross; it was His zeal for the glory of God. The Apostle John saw this clearly when he applied David's quote to Christ by saying: "Zeal for your house will consume me."[ 14 ] It was this zeal also that make Christ's anger flare up at the sight of men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money in the temple courts.[ 15 ] The same zeal and anger was demonstrated at Lazarus' grave when, in John's words, Jesus "was deeply moved in spirit and troubled."[ 16 ] The Greek word enebrimeesato means "snorting with indignation." Jesus was just as much driven by His self sacrificing love, as by His wrath and anger toward Satan, when He gave Himself up to be crucified, carrying the sin of the world.

There can be no doubt about the fact that Phinehas was angry also. He must have seen through Balaam's scheme, although he may not have known about Balaam at this point. He understood that what had happened went well beyond carnal lust and fornication, and that Israel was being drawn into the net demonic powers. He reacted violently against this, and God blessed him for it. Phinehas' act was unique, and, as The Pulpit Commentary remarked, it should never be seen as a precedent. But if some of his anger and zeal could spill over and affect the church of our Lord Jesus Christ, the results would be a very wholesome revival.

In making a covenant of a lasting priesthood with Phinehas and his descendants, God emphasized that priesthood should be characterized by the zeal of Phinehas, and of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our attitude against God's archenemy should be, as David put it: "Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD, and abhor those who rise up against you?"[ 17 ]

The verses 14 and 15 give the names of the Israelite man as Zimri son of Salu, the leader of a Simeonite family, and the name of the Midianite woman as Cozbi daughter of Zur, a tribal chief of a Midianite family." As The Pulpit Commentary points out, Zur is mentioned, in ch. 31:8, as one of the five kings, or tribal chiefs which was killed when Israel invaded Midian. The commentary says: "That the daughter of such a man should have been selected, and should have been willing, to play such a part throws a strong light upon the studied character and the peculiar danger of the seduction."

The whole incident became a reason for a declaration of war with Moab and the Midianites. It is true that Moab is not mentioned at this point, but this does not mean that they are excepted from the forthcoming hostilities. After all, it was the king of Moab who had initiated the matter by calling for Balaam to put a curse on Israel. He not only failed in his objective, but he called disaster upon himself and his nation by invoking the wrath of God and of Israel. As we saw before, both Midian and Moab were deeply involved in the plot. Israel had initially treated Moab as a friendly relative, but all of this changed after this.

[ 1 ] Ps. 106:28-31

[ 2 ] Ch. 31:16

[ 3 ] Italics are mine.

[ 4 ] I Cor. 10:13

[ 5 ] Rom. 12:1,2

[ 6 ] I Cor. 6:13-20

[ 7 ] Eph. 5:31,32

[ 8 ] Ps. 106:30,31

[ 9 ] See James 2:23

[ 10 ] The Pulpit Commentary does not do justice at this point to the text in James. It does not say that righteousness was imputed to Abraham because of his obedient sacrifice, but "the scripture was fulfilled that says, 'Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness." Righteousness had been imputed to Abraham before, not at the moment of the sacrifice of Isaac.

[ 11 ] Ezek. 22:30

[ 12 ] Isa. 53:7

[ 13 ] John 1:29

[ 14 ] John 2:17. See Ps. 69:9

[ 15 ] Matt. 21:12,13; John 2:14-16, etc.

[ 16 ] John 11:33

[ 17 ] Ps. 139:21