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Come and study the Holy Scriptures with us as Fr. Stephen DeYoung teaches verse-by-verse on the podcast The Whole Counsel of God. Fr. Stephen holds a Ph.D. in Biblical Studies and is an Orthodox priest serving at Archangel Gabriel Orthodox Church in Lafayette, Louisiana.

okay we're gonna go get started and we get started we're starting at the beginning of numbers chapter 25 i already did this in person but for the people somewhere in the distant future perhaps all the way in the year 2000 who are listening to this i know a lot of you are young but when i was a kid everything in the distant future was set in the year 2000 so that was the been you remember there you said something on the recording you've been trapped so so and future there is going to be some shall we say mature content mature content this evening in the early part of this evening at least so just be prepared for that but so goodness caught up real quick to where we were because again for you listening to the recording it's been merely a week since the last episode but for us it's been a little bit so we just finished uh with a story the main story involving balaam the son of baor uh the prophet for hire moabite prophet for hire which sounds like a bad tv pilot maybe they'll do a house of david spinoff balaam son of baor um who was hired by balak different guy king of moab uh to come and curse israel and the whole story of him making the trip and his donkey a couple of studies ago and then last time him making several attempts from various pagan shrines uh that gave him a vantage point to look at israel to try to curse israel where he ended up in spite of himself blessing israel much to the consternation of balak who had hired him to curse israel uh ending with balak sort of firing him and telling him to buzz off and that he wasn't going to pay him and he should go back home um and so we talked about how through that experience, Balaam kind of had a takeaway. And that takeaway was that the God of Israel, Yahweh, the God of Israel, was the God who was actually in control. And that as long as the people of Israel remained united with their God, right, in a good relationship, that there was no way effectively to curse them, right? They would be blessed. Now, this could be a positive lesson. Or if you think like Balaam, the son of Baor, you could come up with the idea that, well, wait a minute. Then the best way to actually curse Israel

would be to get them to not be on such good terms with their God. then their god won't protect him in fact he might curse them right if they do the things and being balaam you know having been paid to do a job that you didn't do you might even impart this little piece of wisdom to balak the king of moab who hates israel on your way out the door the proverbial door which is exactly what happened and so as we pick up here in chapter 25 we're going to be picking up with Balak getting ready to execute plan B based on Balaam the son of Baor's counsel and what unfolds here at the beginning of tonight that we're going to be reading and talking about is going to be the reason why Balaam gets considered later on in Second Temple Judaism and even into the New Testament. I don't know if you remember when we were reading Second Peter and Jude, Balaam, son of Baor, popping up there. But he sort of gets remembered as this archetypal false prophet and heretic who leads people astray, particularly into sexual immorality so you may have gleaned from that and from the earlier mature content warning where we're going tonight so get ready but so that catch up being done unless anybody has any leftover comments questions or anime disputes between

Orthodox e-celebrities that need to be discussed. We'll go ahead and pick up in Numbers chapter 25, verse 1. Now, Israel remained in Soutine, and the people were defiled by committing fornication with the daughters of Moab. Well, that gets right to the point, right? So I wasn't really spoiling things. It was about to get spoiled right here in verse 1. So this just leaves it vague in terms of, so of course there's literal fornication, and there's fornication used very frequently in the Torah and the rest of the Hebrew Bible to describe idolatry, as described as fornication. because they're straying outside of their relationship with the true God. And in this case, as we're about to see, this is a porque no los dos situation. Why not both? For those of you who don't know any Spanish. Both of those are what's going to transpire. But now we're going to get some more detail. So verse 2. They invited them to the sacrifices of their idols, and the people ate their sacrifices and worshipped their idols. So Israel consecrated themselves to Baal of Peor, and the Lord was very angry with Israel. So when it says that the daughters of Moab invited them to Baal of Peor to their sacrifices, and they went, this was not like, oh, hey, I met this cute girl, and she invited me to go to church with her on Sunday. I hear her church is kind of weird. okay this is not the situation right um so Baal Peor or Baal Peor right is we've already seen Peor actually Peor was mentioned it was one of the one of the shrines one of the high places we talked about how the shrines to Baal and most of the other Canaanite gods were referred to as high places because they were built on hills they were literally high elevated places and generally there would be there in addition to obviously some kind of idol, there would often be an Asherah sometimes called Asherah Poles in English translations. Pol is a euphemism. These were large wooden or stone phalluses that were there. And then there would be a kind of what gets called in the literature a quote unquote sacred grove. But in this case would not be like a grove of, you don't have like a grove of fruit trees on a hill in the Transjordan, right? This is, but there would be trees, right? There would be other trees.

Sometimes the Asherah was itself an actual living tree that had been carved or cut, carved or cut to look like a phallus. So it's not subtle? No, it's not subtle. It's, yeah, it's rendered subtle by the English euphemistic translation. And so these daughters of Moab who are, quote-unquote, inviting them, again, aren't inviting them to, like, worship services, they're shrine prostitutes. These are women who are associated with, they were essentially slaves. They were essentially slaves owned by the priesthood, the pagan priesthood that operated at that site. And they were there because the festal rituals surrounding the sacrifices involved group sexual intercourse. And so they were there for those purposes. so they are to get rid of the euphemistic language they're enticing men to come and participate in these pagan sacrifices and offerings to the idols and have sexual intercourse with them often because this was surrounding a feast they're eating that meat and stuff from the sacrifices they're also getting intoxicated sometimes what we would call drugs right boiled leaves whatever right are being used as intoxicants also in addition to just alcohol and then in that state which they consider to be a heightened spiritual state they would have group sexual activity so that's what the israelites are going and doing okay that's why god's mad at them right it's not like how dare you not go to orthodox liturgy and go to the presbyterian church right that's not that i'm saying you should go to a presbyterian church but we're in a whole different ballpark here than that okay and this is something in which the israelite men are eagerly participating okay so demon worship sexual immorality all at once right all into one and balak has this is a setup right like balak has sent has said send the women to you know right, entice them into this, right. So it's planned. Then the Lord said to Moses, take all the rulers of the people and make a public example of them for the Lord that the anger of the Lord's wrath may be turned away from Israel. So Moses said to the member, to the tribes of Israel, each one of you kill any member of his household who was consecrated to Baal of Peor. okay consecrated to means participated in particularly the sexual activity

and so notice god says right you need to make example of the rulers right the people who are in charge because remember moses had elders of the people were supposed to be the ones who are guiding the people and administering justice and and all this, right? And so as we've talked about before, because they have that position of authority that's been given to them by God through Moses, that also gives them this higher level of accountability. So some dumb kid who's, you know, 15 years, 16 years old, who got enticed by this is one thing, right? The guy who's the elder and the head of a big extended family and all the men who went and participated in this is a different kettle of fish, right? And that guy who's in charge is the one who's going to be sort of publicly held accountable for it with, in this case, the death penalty, right? Because obviously this is something that cannot be tolerated and cannot continue.

So the Lord's anger flares up against them. How is that, what does that look like on the ground? I mean, they don't say, I know, but how do you understand that?

Well, so God's wrath is essentially, so we've talked before about sort of how salvation works, right? The God's grace, we're talking about the divine energies, meaning God's activities. And when we are doing the things that God does, right, then we're participating in God's activities. And that's transformative of us in a positive way, right? And we become more like God, right? So God's pouring out his love on his creation. When we love someone, we love our neighbor, right? Then we're participating in that, right? And that transforms us in a positive way. When we're not on board with that, when we're fighting against that, so when we hate our neighbor, right? God loves them, we hate them, okay? That's like being in a roaring river and trying to go in the opposite direction, right? So what does that bring about? Well, our destruction. And so that state of being at odds with God, right, that is destructive and harmful to us until we repent, that's what the scriptures call God's wrath.

So things just start going wrong.

Yes, yes.

And we're, well, yeah,

and it has spiritual emotional even physical consequences like you can see it in people right right people who've gone really far down the long wrong road and who then repent and turn back like you can see in a photo of them you could see oh yeah they were in a really bad place there they're in a much better place now and that's on the physical level let alone the emotional spiritual everything else right because we're sort of cutting god is the source of our life so we're cutting ourselves off from that so we're bringing death and right destruction and everything else upon ourselves yeah this has this has to be stopped and so by making a public example of the leaders you're showing everyone this is where this leads i know right now right the day after you went did this you don't see what all the consequences are you don't see where this road is going to lead you yet right but by the time you get down that road far enough to see it may almost be too late right and so we're going to show you this is where this leads stop right turn back now right So this is the order that's gone out, okay? And in the midst of this, okay, then Moses has gathered all the people, right? So as he said to the tribes of Israel, this wasn't like he was sending paper messengers or something. They're all gathered by the gateway to the tabernacle, and Moses is announcing this, that this is what's going to happen. And in the midst of that, now behold, the word that's so the word that's translated behold all the time in the king james uh sometimes low low this is uh the hebrew word hene and it actually means more like immediately right or right just then just at that moment right not behold you know at least we don't talk that way Maybe in the Elizabethan England, they talked that way, you know, when someone suddenly appeared, they went, behold. But so just then a man of the children of Israel came and brought his brother to a Midianite woman in the sight of Moses and all the congregation of the children of Israel. And they were weeping at the door of the tabernacle of testimony. So they're standing there and Moses is announcing this and all the people are gathered. And right in front of Moses and everybody, this guy leads one of the shrine prostitutes and takes her into his tent to have sexual relations with her. Yeah, so somewhat brazen, little bit brazen, right?

But notice how the people respond. No, they all weep. yes they're like you know beating yes yeah well and repenting and this is horrible right this is horrible meanwhile and then this happens right right in front of everyone now when phineas the son of eleazar the son of aaron the priest saw this he rose from among the congregation and took a spear in his hand we'll pause there for just a second you may see where this is going but um so phineas is aaron's grandson now we saw aaron has already died a few chapters ago and eliezer has become the high priest eliezer is phineas's father here's the interesting thing you may not know about phineas phineas was black do you know how i know this because his name is an Egyptian word, Penehas, that means black-skinned one. And Penehas is an Egyptian term that they use to refer to Nubians. Like it's literally what they called black Africans. That's his name. How did that happen? Well, if you were paying close attention earlier, eliezer aaron's son who's the current high priest married a woman who was from put which is uh the southern part of libya part of what's now sudan right so he married an african woman so i've been noting all along right as we've been going through this people have this idea that there was some kind of ethnic group that made up ancient israel that is not the case right now it's true there were no swedes right there was no one there who looked like me there were no blonde-haired blue-eyed pale people right you wouldn't have survived long in the sinai desert skin cancer melanoma would have taken you out pretty quick i know from bad beach experiences in my youth but right so people were you know different shades of brown right but lighter and darker right much darker in some cases right but there was a range this is not an ethnically unified people at this point now at various points in Israel's history they become more ethnically unified just because you're going to marry somebody who's you know from the same town or village and so you have several generations of people who live in one area all intermarrying people end up looking kind of alike right after many generations but here at the beginning

israel is fairly in our modern terms ethnically diverse and this and phineas who ends up becoming the third high priest of israel being a black african man is an example of that right but so he's the one who steps up everybody else is kind of shocked and horrified, right? But he's like, no, this isn't happening right now. And so he goes and he grabs a spear. He went after the man of Israel into the chambers and thrust both of them through the man of Israel and the woman through her womb. I won't go into more graphic detail than that, but he kills both of them in a way somewhat poetically appropriate to what they're doing. So the plague was stopped among the children of Israel, but those who died in the plague were 24,000. And so him doing this sort of ends the need for anyone else to die, is the idea, right? Because he has just made a very public example. Right where everyone can see that is where this goes. Then the Lord spoke to Moses saying Phineas the son of Eleazar the son of Aaron the priest stopped my wrath from among the children of Israel when he was zealous with my zeal among them so I did not utterly destroy the children of Israel in my zeal therefore say behold I give to him my covenant of peace and there shall be to him and his seed after him, a covenant of an eternal priesthood, because he was zealous for his God and made atonement for the children of Israel. So God says, hey, right, he did the right thing. And so not only is he going to be the high priest, but it's going to be through him in particular, because there were other sons of Eliezer. It's going to be through him in particular that the high priest is going to be reckoned. And it talks about, yes, his zeal. So zeal is a transliterated Greek word. So that's where the Orthodox study Bible is getting it. And it talks about his zeal and God's zeal, right? So zeal, the way it's being used here, right? It can be used, I mean, zealous could be used in lots of different ways, right? But in terms of what's going on here, and Phineas becomes exhibit A for the whole concept of zeal and zealotry, zealots that we get in the New testament like saint simon the zealot who's one of the 12 disciples whole idea of zealotry starts kind of starts here with phineas um there are hints of it before but phineas is sort of exhibit a and so acts of zealotus the preceding example would be like the levites at the golden calf

who helped moses sort of handle business which also involved killing a bunch of people um but so the zeal is not about killing okay killing is the product of the zeal in this case but zeal is not just like flying into a murderous rage okay zeal is about protecting what is sacred and what is holy and preserving the purity and the holiness of what is holy having that desire to do so so other examples where we can see this when christ cleanses the temple when he drives the money changers out of the temple he quotes jeremiah and says what zeal for your house has consumed me right the desire for this holy place to remain pure and holy to remove whatever is right sullying that right or desecrating that and so that is what is going on here with Phineas right so Phineas right they're in front of the tabernacle right which is supposed to be of course the holiest part of the camp but the whole camp is supposed to be holy right we've talked about people who are repenting and stuff they go outside the camp to do it and purify themselves before they come back in the camp so this person who he just killed this is worse than what the other people were doing they were at least going outside the camp to do it right they were going to this pagan shrine which wasn't holy it's a shrine to demons right they're going and doing foul things there right and desecrating themselves but this person went a big step further by bringing that into the camp bringing that into a place that was supposed to be holy and doing it there and thereby desecrating it and so god talks about his own zeal meaning god wants to preserve the holiness right of the camp and phineas sort of shared that and it's that zeal that's commended. Now, in this case, it takes the form, right? Christ didn't kill any of the money changers, right? So it doesn't have to be about actually killing people, right? But it's that desire, right, for purity and maintaining that purity and that holiness and that sacredness that is commended, right? And this is where we come back to paradise, right? So when we talked about way back we talked about in genesis 1 how the structure of genesis 1 is very similar

to the structure of narratives of temple building in the ancient near east and how part of what genesis was conveying was that paradise is created as this temple for god with adam there to serve as the priest right and how it inverted some of the things with the temple because in those temple building narratives in the ancient near east the last thing that you did was you made an idol you made an image of the god and then you did a ceremony where you breathe the spirit of the god into it whereas in genesis in paradise god creates paradise and then he makes an image of himself right adam is made god makes adam in his own image and then breathes life into into Adam, right? So, Adam is both the image and the priest, right? So, what should Adam have done when confronted by the serpent? He should have had zeal, shared God's zeal, and driven him out, right? But he didn't, right? He didn't protect the holiness of that holy place. He instead desecrated himself and so what happened he had to be driven out of that holy place so that's right where this this idea comes in what happens is this spawns the whole idea of zealotry which has good and bad manifestations and one of the manifestations in the first century when we get to the new testament we're talking about like saint simon the zealot or judas right the iscariot on judas is actually saying that he was a member of the sicarii which was another zealot group the one judas was a member of would assassinate roman officials they literally just went around any roman official they could get their hands on they murdered mostly low ranking because they were easier to get your hands on um but so they had this whole idea that that judea the land was holy right and they needed to throw off the Romans and kill the Romans and right to try to make it holy again. This is a misapplication. St. Paul starts out when we first meet him as a zealot. He thinks that the Christians are this heretical sect and he thinks well it's my job as a good faithful Pharisee to wipe out these heretics. Right so he's going around imprisoning them starting mob riots like with saint stephen to get them killed so he's doing all these things and then later obviously once he encounters christ saint paul says that he had zeal but not according to knowledge

right he had zeal he had that but it was not rational right it was misdirected it was not right aimed at the right thing so he doesn't say zeal is bad but he he he breaks with the political zealot movement, right, as being misdirected and ignorant. Whereas he will say positive things, he'll say, be zealous to do good works, right? He will use the term zeal in a positive way once it's aligned with knowledge, right, specifically the knowledge of Christ. And so zeal is about protecting holy things and places and keeping them holy. Right. And so St. Paul is going to redirect that a lot of different ways. St. Paul is going to say the marriage bed is holy and undefiled. Right. And that's not just him saying, oh, marriage is good. Because he didn't have to say that to a Jewish audience. They already knew that. Right. What St. Paul means by the marriage bed is holy and undefiled is he's throwing this obligation onto men. Right. Who's the priest of the family. if you're the priest of the family and this marriage bed is holy and undefiled then you have an obligation to protect that right which means if that's true and he's saying this to the corinthians former pagans renowned for being sexually immoral right? If that's true and you're a priest and you're supposed to show zeal for the holiness of that place, you're not going to allow anything into your marriage bed that's going to corrupt it or desecrate it, right? Your job is to protect that sexual relationship with your spouse from all of that garbage, which is a pretty high call to chastity, right? For men in the first century, Rome. It needs to be reiterated today, frankly. So that's, right, a holy place, right? But he's also going to say, in general, to Christians, right, your body is what? The temple of the Holy Spirit. So if you're zealous for God and for holiness, that means you're not going to take in things that are impure, that are going to desecrate that, and you're not going to go out and do things right that are that are going to to desecrate that and he gives specific examples and the specific examples he gives unsurprisingly given this context are sexual right he says you know you're you're part of the body of christ you're its members are you going to go join the members of christ to a prostitute right no right like that's not but it's not just sexual sin it's

anything that desecrates it. So that's the core idea here. And that's a core idea that still applies to any place or thing or relationship that's holy and pure. That we're not only to maintain that, but we're to be zealous. We're supposed to be motivated to maintain that and vigilant about it. Now, the name of the man of Israel who was struck down together with the Midianite woman was Zimri, the son of Sallu, the ruler of a house of a Simeonite family. So this wasn't just any random guy who did this either. This was one of the elders of the tribe of Simeon, right? So this was an important member of the community who did this public thing. The name of the Midianite woman who was struck down was Cosby. I don't make this up. It's right there. The daughter of Zer, the ruler of the nation of Omot, of the house of a Midianite family. Then the Lord spoke to Moses saying, Be at enmity with the Midianites and strike them, for they themselves are at enmity with you in their deceit. And as much as they dealt treacherously with you in the matter of Peor and in the matter of Cosby, the daughter of a ruler of Midian, their sister who was struck down in the day of the plague because of Peor. well so midianite is a broad term midianite is uh sort of like arab today right so the midianites include edomites ishmaelites um lots of other related groups but who don't like moabites but who don't live in like edom or moab they're they're nomadic and live in the desert right so jethro yeah his father-in-law is a midianite right because he's from those people and he lived it but that's a different desert right that's a whole different desert right that he and his family lived in so it's sort of like bedouin right or uh before muhammad the word arab just meant any of the tribal groups that lived in certain desert areas right nomadically uh yeah so it's more like that but so the idea here is god is saying right that they're in part responsible like these people are your enemies because they they conspired to do this this wasn't just accidental it wasn't just oh the shrine prostitute happened to be a midianite right it's the they conspired to do this and because they conspired to do this to you they are your enemy because they were leading you into sin. And they were with Balaam, right? Yeah, yeah, Balaam and Balak.

Balaam's idea, Balak, the king of Moab, is the one who made the connections and made this happen, right? And they're going to get theirs a little later in the book of Numbers in a few chapters, spoilers. But they're not off the hook either. But so the point here is being made like they're responsible too because they conspired in it. Here's another connection to the Genesis story. It's what Adam did that was decisive in the Genesis story, but Eve certainly participated in it, and so she also suffers the consequences. So the same thing here. This elder of the tribe of Simeon is the one. most, right, held accountable for it, but because these women and the Midianites, right, were conspiring, right, it wasn't accidental, there are consequences for them too, right? They were willing participants in all this that happened.

Listen next time as Father Stephen DeYoung continues his study of the Scriptures on The Whole Council of God. Fr. Stephen's email address is wholecouncil at ancientfaith.com That's wholecouncil at ancientfaith.com