Numbers 25

¹ Israel settled at Shittim. The people gave themselves over to debauchery with the daughters of Moab.

² These invited them to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down before their gods.

³ With Israel thus committed to the Baal of Peor, the anger of Yahweh blazed out against them.

⁴ Yahweh said to Moses, ‘Take all the leaders of the people. Impale them for Yahweh, here in the sun; then the burning anger of Yahweh will turn away from Israel.’

⁵ Moses said to the judges in Israel, ‘Every one of you must put to death those of his people who have committed themselves to the Baal of Peor’.

⁶ A man of the sons of Israel came along, bringing the Midianite woman into his family, under the very eyes of Moses and the whole community of the sons of Israel as they wept at the door of the Tent of Meeting.

⁷ When he saw this, Phinehas the priest, son of Eleazar son of Aaron, stood up and left the assembly, seized a lance,

⁸ followed the Israelite into the alcove, and there ran them both through, the Israelite and the woman, right through the groin. And the plague that had struck the sons of Israel was arrested.

⁹ In the plague twenty-four thousand of them had died.

¹⁰ Yahweh spoke to Moses and said,

¹¹ ‘Phinehas the priest, son of Eleazar son of Aaron, has turned my wrath away from the sons of Israel, because he was the only one among them to have the same zeal as I have; for this I did not make an end, in my zeal, of the sons of Israel.

¹² Proclaim this, therefore: To him I now grant my covenant of peace.

¹³ For him and for his descendants after him, this covenant shall ensure the priesthood for ever. In reward for his zeal for his God, he shall have the right to perform the ritual of atonement over the sons of Israel.’

¹⁴ The Israelite who was killed (he who had been killed with the Midianite woman) was called Zimri son of Salu, leader of one of the patriarchal Houses of Simeon.

¹⁵ The woman, the Midianite who was killed, was called Cozbi, daughter of Zur, chief of a clan, of a patriarchal House in Midian.

¹⁶ Yahweh spoke to Moses and said,

¹⁷ ‘Harry the Midianites and strike them down,

¹⁸ for they have harassed you with their guile in the Peor affair and in the affair of Cozbi their sister, daughter of a prince of Midian, the woman who was killed the day the plague came on account of Peor’.

¹⁹ After this plague,