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Selected Verse: Numbers 25:8 - King James
| Verse |
Translation |
Text |
| Nu 25:8 |
King James |
And he went after the man of Israel into the tent, and thrust both of them through, the man of Israel, and the woman through her belly. So the plague was stayed from the children of Israel. |
Summary Of Commentaries Associated With The Selected Verse
| A Commentary, Critical, Practical, and Explanatory on the Old and New Testaments, by Robert Jamieson, A.R. Fausset and David Brown [1882] |
| the plague--some sudden and widespread mortality. |
| Notes on the Bible, by Albert Barnes, [1834] |
| Into the tent - The inner recess in the tent, fashioned archwise, and appropriated as the sleeping-chamber and women's apartment. |
| Commentary on the Old Testament, by Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch [1857-78] |
Through this judgment, which was executed by Phinehas with holy zeal upon the daring sinners, the plague was restrained, so that it came to an end. The example which Phinehas had made of these sinners was an act of intercession, by which the high priest appeased the wrath of God, and averted the judgment of destruction from the whole congregation ("he was zealous for his God," ויכפּר, Num 25:13). The thought upon which this expression is founded is, that the punishment which was inflicted as a purifying chastisement served as a "covering" against the exterminating judgment (see Herzog's Cyclopaedia).
(Note: Upon this act of Phinehas, and the similar examples of Samuel (Sa1 15:33) and Mattathias (1 Macc. 2:24), the later Jews erected the so-called "zealot right," jus zelotarum, according to which any one, even though not qualified by his official position, possessed the right, in cases of any daring contempt of the theocratic institutions, or any daring violation of the honour of God, to proceed with vengeance against the criminals. (See Salden, otia theol. pp. 609ff., and Buddeus, de jure zelotarum apud Hebr. 1699, and in Oelrich's collect. T. i. Diss. 5.) The stoning of Stephen furnishes an example of this.)
Num 25:9
Twenty-four thousand men were killed by this plague. The Apostle Paul deviates from this statement in Co1 10:8, and gives the number of those that fell as twenty-three thousand, probably from a traditional interpretation of the schools of the scribes, according to which a thousand were deducted from the twenty-four thousand who perished, as being the number of those who were hanged by the judges, so that only twenty-three thousand would be killed by the plague; and it is to these alone that Paul refers. |
| Explanatory Notes on the Whole Bible, by John Wesley [1754-65] |
| Thrust them thro' - Phineas was himself a man in great authority, and did this after the command given by Moses to the rulers to slay these transgressors, and in the very sight, and no doubt by the consent of Moses himself, and also by the special direction of God's spirit. |
| Adam Clarke Commentary on the Whole Bible - Published 1810-1826 |
| Thrust both of them through - Inspired undoubtedly by the Spirit of the God of justice to do this act, which can never be a precedent on any common occasion. An act something similar occurs in our own history. In 1381, in the minority of Richard II., a most formidable insurrection took place in Kent and Essex; about 100,000 men, chiefly under the direction of Wat Tyler, seized on London, massacred multitudes of innocent people, and were proceeding to the greatest enormities, when the king requiring a conference in Smithfield with the rebel leader, Sir William Walworth, then mayor of London, provoked at the insolence with which Tyler behaved to his sovereign, knocked him off his horse with his mace, after which he was instantly dispatched. While his partisans were bending their bows to revenge the death of their leader, Richard, then only sixteen years of age, rode up to them, and with great courage and presence of mind thus addressed them: "What, my people, will you kill your king! be not concerned for the death of your leader; follow me, and I will be your general." They were suddenly appeased, and the rebellion terminated. The action of Sir William Walworth was that of a zealot, of essential benefit at the time, and justified only by the pressing exigencies of the case. |
8 Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand.
9 And those that died in the plague were twenty and four thousand.
33 And Samuel said, As thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women. And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the LORD in Gilgal.
13 And he shall have it, and his seed after him, even the covenant of an everlasting priesthood; because he was zealous for his God, and made an atonement for the children of Israel.