Numbers 25:1–5, King James Version
Italic words were supplied in the English translation for clarity.
Numbers 25:1–5
Peor Worship Brings a Command to Kill Leaders
At Shittim, sex, meals, and bowing become Baal-peor
Israel abides in Shittim. The people begin to commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab. The women invite the people to the sacrifices of their gods. The people eat, bow down to their gods, and Israel joins himself to Baal-peor. The LORD's anger is kindled against Israel.
The breach is not a private romance the narrator happens to dislike. Meals at other gods' sacrifices and bowing are named with the sexual unions. Moabite women are agents in the invitation; they are not a race to blame, and the Israelite men are not excused as victims of foreign seduction.
Leaders are to be killed and exposed; judges are told to slay
The LORD tells Moses to take all the heads of the people and hang them up before the LORD against the sun, that the fierce anger may be turned away. Moses tells the judges of Israel to slay every one his men that were joined to Baal-peor.
Two lethal instructions sit together: a command about leaders exposed in public, and Moses' order that judges kill offenders. The unit does not tidy their relationship. It also does not authorize execution for religion or sexuality now, forced conversion, an intermarriage ban as policy, misogyny, or violence against any living people labeled Moabite.
How this should shape us
Name covenant betrayal where worship, table, and sex were joined, without turning foreign women into the cause of Israel's sin. Do not take a wilderness execution order into a courtroom, a family, or a campaign against another ethnicity.
Teach it back
Explain Numbers 25:1–5 in your own words. Include its place in Numbers' movement from Sinai to Moab, both movements within this thought unit, one material uncertainty, one affected person or group, and one use the complete context rules out.
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Go deeper
The explanation above is meant to stand on its own. Open these notes only if you want language, history, disagreements, or source locations.
Where careful interpreters disagreeThe strongest options and their difficulties
Where do careful interpreters disagree?
Best judgment: Interpreters debate how many rebellion stories were combined, the justice of each claim, motives, source layers, miracle and death descriptions, leadership ideology, and the ethics of punishment. Visible questions must not be replaced with invented certainty. For “Peor Worship Brings a Command to Kill Leaders,” confidence is strongest in the received unit's stated sequence and literary function; source, date, demography, geography, mechanism, archaeology, and historical reconstruction remain probable, plausible, or uncertain as the evidence warrants.
How certain? probableResearch trail and exact locationsThe source record behind this section
Supports: Exact reader-facing KJV wording, paragraph metadata, supplied-word markup, and complete verse coverage for this thought unit.
Numbers 25:1–5, pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM corpus
Supports: Hebrew wording, morphology, names, numbers, speeches, poems, legal clauses, older-English controls, and translation limits.
Open Scriptures MorphHB v.2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/Num.xml, Masoretic words and morphology for 25:1–5
Supports: Unit-bounded translation, syntax, lexical, ritual, legal, number, name, poetic, and selected textual notes; silence is not evidence.
NET Bible Numbers PDF, complete 134-page PDF, translation and translator notes attached to 25:1–5
Supports: Moab movement, law, leadership transition, land, war, women, refuge, and compositional framing.
Yale Bible Study, Numbers Part 2, complete two-page study guide sections on Balaam, Baal Peor, second census, women and inheritance, war with Midian, Transjordan, itinerary, boundaries, Levite and refuge cities, and final inheritance, applied to Numbers 25:1–5
Supports: Narrative violence, later reinterpretation, named victims, zeal, authority, and non-vigilante ethical boundary.
TheTorah, “Sedition at Moab: Josephus' Reading of the Phinehas Story,” complete Numbers 25 comparison with Josephus, including sex, worship, public killing, plague, zeal, and peace-covenant reception, applied to Numbers 25:1–5
Sources for This Section
These records identify the source, the claim it supports, and the exact location used. A source remains evidence to evaluate; it does not replace the biblical text.
Biblical text
King James (Authorized) Version — eng-kjv2006
eBible.org and CrossWire Bible Society
USFM archive eng-kjv2006_usfm.zip; source files dated 2026-08-19; downloaded 2026-08-24; archive SHA-256 aec1b3b26c622fd3d963d2bbac963016b9513246ffbfa20da00bb100372ea007; normalized corpus SHA-256 09aef51d90488aa7b9722b3fd9a93f4b25f6bf2064c5fd798fb39673c300ddf2.
Supports: Exact reader-facing KJV wording, paragraph metadata, supplied-word markup, and complete verse coverage for this thought unit.
Exact location: Numbers 25:1–5, pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM corpus
Open source ↗hebrew text and morphology
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible: Numbers
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible Project
Open Scriptures, release 2.2, 2021
Supports: Hebrew wording, morphology, names, numbers, speeches, poems, legal clauses, older-English controls, and translation limits.
Exact location: Open Scriptures MorphHB v.2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/Num.xml, Masoretic words and morphology for 25:1–5
Open source ↗translation and translator notes
NET Bible: Numbers with translators' notes
Biblical Studies Press
eBible.org distribution of the NET Bible, source files dated 2026-08-08
Supports: Unit-bounded translation, syntax, lexical, ritual, legal, number, name, poetic, and selected textual notes; silence is not evidence.
Exact location: NET Bible Numbers PDF, complete 134-page PDF, translation and translator notes attached to 25:1–5
Open source ↗modern critical open study guide
Numbers Part 2
Yale Bible Study
Yale Divinity School, 2023 course edition
Supports: Moab movement, law, leadership transition, land, war, women, refuge, and compositional framing.
Exact location: Yale Bible Study, Numbers Part 2, complete two-page study guide sections on Balaam, Baal Peor, second census, women and inheritance, war with Midian, Transjordan, itinerary, boundaries, Levite and refuge cities, and final inheritance, applied to Numbers 25:1–5
Open source ↗modern jewish scholarly open violence and reception study
Sedition at Moab: Josephus' Reading of the Phinehas Story
TheTorah.com named scholarly contributor
TheTorah.com, 2019
Supports: Narrative violence, later reinterpretation, named victims, zeal, authority, and non-vigilante ethical boundary.
Exact location: TheTorah, “Sedition at Moab: Josephus' Reading of the Phinehas Story,” complete Numbers 25 comparison with Josephus, including sex, worship, public killing, plague, zeal, and peace-covenant reception, applied to Numbers 25:1–5
Open source ↗