Numbers 25

1While Israel was staying at Shittim, the people began to prostitute themselves with the women of Moab.

2These women invited the people to the sacrifices to their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods.

3So Israel yoked itself to Baal of Peor, and Yahweh’s anger burned against Israel.

4Yahweh said to Moses, “Take all the leaders of the people and execute them before Yahweh in broad daylight, so that Yahweh’s fierce anger may turn away from Israel.”

5So Moses said to the judges of Israel, “Each of you must kill those of your men who have yoked themselves to Baal of Peor.”

6Just then one of the Israelites came and brought a Midianite woman to his relatives, right before the eyes of Moses and the whole congregation of the Israelites, while they were weeping at the entrance of the tent of meeting.

7When Phinehas son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he got up from among the congregation, took a spear in his hand,

8and went after the Israelite man into the tent. He drove the spear through both of them, through the Israelite man and into the woman’s belly. Then the plague on the Israelites was stopped.

9But those who died in the plague numbered twenty-four thousand.

10Yahweh said to Moses,

11“Phinehas son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, has turned my wrath away from the Israelites, because he was zealous with my zeal among them, so that I did not wipe out the Israelites in my zeal.

12Therefore say, ‘I am giving him my covenant of peace.

13It will be for him and his descendants after him a covenant of permanent priesthood, because he was zealous for his God and made atonement for the Israelites.’”

14The name of the Israelite man who was killed with the Midianite woman was Zimri son of Salu, the leader of an ancestral house of the Simeonites.

15The name of the Midianite woman who was killed was Cozbi daughter of Zur, who was the tribal head of an ancestral house in Midian.

16Yahweh said to Moses,

17“Treat the Midianites as enemies and strike them down,

18for they have treated you as enemies with the tricks they used to deceive you in the matter of Peor and in the matter of their sister Cozbi, the daughter of a Midianite leader, who was killed on the day of the plague that came because of Peor.”