Numbers 25:4 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Numbers 25:4
And the LORD said unto Moses, Take all the heads of the people, and hang them up before the LORD against the sun, that the fierce anger of the LORD may be turned away from Israel.
a front · cardinal number, masculine singular construct
LORD
לַיהוָ֖הla.Yah.weh
H3068
Jehovah · preposition + proper noun, a title
sun
הַשָּׁ֑מֶשׁha.Sha.mesh
H8121
the sun · definite article + noun, common both genders singular absolute
fierce
חֲר֥וֹןcha.Ron
H2740
a burning of anger · noun, common masculine singular construct
anger
אַף'af-
H639
properly · noun, common masculine singular construct
LORD
יְהוָ֖הYah.weh
H3068
Jehovah · proper noun, a title
away
וְיָשֹׁ֛בve.ya.Sho
H7725
to turn back (hence · conjunction + verb, qal jussive, 3rd person masculine singular
Israel
מִיִּשְׂרָאֵֽלmi.Yis.ra.'El
H3478
Jisrael · preposition + proper noun, a place name
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Deuteronomy 13:17 And there shall cleave nought of the cursed thing to thine hand: that the LORD may turn from the fierceness of his anger, and shew thee merc…
Deuteronomy 4:3 Your eyes have seen what the LORD did because of Baal-peor: for all the men that followed Baal-peor, the LORD thy God hath destroyed them fr…
Numbers 25:11 Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, hath turned my wrath away from the children of Israel, while he was zealous for m…
Deuteronomy 21:23 His body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day; (for he that is hanged is accursed of God;)…
2 Samuel 21:6 Let seven men of his sons be delivered unto us, and we will hang them up unto the LORD in Gibeah of Saul, whom the LORD did choose. And the…
Exodus 18:25 And Moses chose able men out of all Israel, and made them heads over the people, rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties,…
Numbers 25:14-15 Now the name of the Israelite that was slain, even that was slain with the Midianitish woman, was Zimri, the son of Salu, a prince of a chie…
Numbers 25:18 For they vex you with their wiles, wherewith they have beguiled you in the matter of Peor, and in the matter of Cozbi, the daughter of a pri…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Numbers 25:1-5
Here is, I. The sin of Israel, to which they were enticed by the daughters of Moab and Midian; they were guilty both of corporal and spiritual whoredoms, for Israel joined himself unto Baal-peor, Num 25:3. Not all, nor the most, but very many, were taken in this snare. Now concerning this observe, 1. That Balak, by the advice of Balaam, cast this stumbling-block before the children of Israel, Rev 2:14. Note, Those are our worst enemies that draw us to sin, for that is the greatest mischief any man can do us. If Balak had drawn out his armed men against them to fight them, Israel had bravely resisted, and no doubt had been more than conquerors; but now that he sends his beautiful women among…
The Lord said unto Moses, Take all the heads of the people, and hang them up--Israelite criminals, who were capitally punished, were first stoned or slain, and then gibbeted. The persons ordered here for execution were the principal delinquents in the Baal-peor outrage--the subordinate officers, rulers of tens or hundreds.
before the Lord--for vindicating the honor of the true God.
against the sun--that is, as a mark of public ignominy; but they were to be removed towards sunset (Deu 21:23).
John Gill on Numbers 25:4
And the Lord said unto Moses,.... Being provoked with the sins of the people, he called to him out of the tabernacle, or out of the cloud:
take all the heads of the people, the princes of the tribes, not to hang them, but to judge those that worshipped Peor, as Jarchi interprets it; though some think that these having sinned, were ordered to be taken and hanged, and made public examples of; but it can hardly be thought, though there were some that might be guilty of the above sins, as Zimri, yet not all of them:
hang them up before the Lord against the sun; that is, those that were guilty of idolatry: the meaning is, and which all the Targums give into, that these heads of the people were…
"And the Lord," it says, "was angry with fury against Israel. And the Lord said to Moses: Take the chiefs of the people and display them to the Lord before the sun, and the anger of the Lord's fury shall be turned away from Israel." I do not know whether, in discussing these things, we may not offend some; but even if we do offend, it is more fitting to obey and serve the word of the Lord than the favor of men. Israel sinned, and the Lord said to Moses that he should take all the chiefs and display them to the Lord before the sun. The people sins, and the chiefs are displayed before the sun — that is, they are brought forth to be examined, that they may be reproved by the light. You see what the condition of the chiefs of the people is: they are reproved not only for their own offenses, but they are also compelled to render account for the sins of the people, lest it be their fault that the people transgressed — lest perhaps they did not teach, lest perhaps they did not admonish, nor were solicitous to reprove those who gave the beginning of the fault, so that the contagion might not be scattered among the many. For it is incumbent upon the chiefs and the teachers to do all these things. For if, when they do not do these things nor bear solicitude concerning the people, the people has sinned, they themselves are displayed and they themselves are brought forth to judgment. For Moses — that is, the law of God — reproves them as negligent and slothful, and the wrath of God will be turned upon them and will cease from the people. If men considered these things, they would never desire nor strive after the chieftainship of the people. For it is enough for me if I am reproved for my own offenses; it is enough for me to render account for my own self and my own sins. What need is there for me also to be displayed for the sins of the people, and to be displayed before the sun, before which nothing can be hidden, nothing obscured? But perhaps even in this there is some hidden and secret sense which teaches something more than this common exposition seems to have. For perhaps this too can be referred to those chiefs of the people of whom we spoke a little above. For the angels too will come to judgment with us and will stand for us before the sun of righteousness, lest perhaps something of the cause of our transgression should have been from them too — lest perhaps…
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Baal — Lord. (1.) The name appropriated to the principal male god of the Phoenicians. It is found in several places in the plural BAALIM (Judg. 2:11; 10:10; 1 Kings 18:18; Jer. 2:23; Hos. 2:17). Baal is…
Balaam — Lord of the people; foreigner or glutton, as interpreted by others, the son of Beor, was a man of some rank among the Midianites (Num. 31:8; comp. 16). He resided at Pethor (Deut. 23:4), in…
Hanging — (as a punishment), a mark of infamy inflicted on the dead bodies of criminals (Deut. 21:23) rather than our modern mode of punishment. Criminals were first strangled and then hanged (Nu. 25:4; Deut.…
Phinehas — Mouth of brass, or from old Egypt, the negro. (1.) Son of Eleazar, the high priest (Ex. 6:25). While yet a youth he distinguished himself at Shittim by his zeal against the immorality into which the…
Punishments — The earliest theory of punishment current among mankind is doubtless the one of simple retaliation, “blood for blood.” Viewed historically, the first case of punishment for crime mentioned in…
Alliance And Society With The Enemies Of God · Lead to idolatry — Lead to idolatry
Judgments · .For complaining — .For complaining
Midianites · With the moabites: Seduced Israel to idolatry — With the moabites: Seduced Israel to idolatry
Punishments · Capital kinds of: Hanging — Capital kinds of: Hanging
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
on Numbers 25:4-5
And the Lord said unto Moses. We have often seen before how God executed His judgments by His own hand, as if He put it forth from heaven; He now imposes this office on Moses, although it is evident from the context that he was not appointed to execute it alone, but that the other judges were associated with him; for it immediately follows that Moses intrusted the same charge to them, and thus, what was obscure, on account of the brevity with which it is recorded, is more clearly expressed. At any rate, it was a notable judgment of God Himself, though He employed men as its ministers. Nor does Paul in vain exhort [184] us by this example to beware of fornication.
The mode of the punishment,…
And the anger of the Lord burned against the people, so that Jehovah commanded Moses to fetch the heads of the people, i.e., to assemble them together, and to "hang up" the men who had joined themselves to Baal-Peor "before the Lord against the sun," that the anger of God might turn away from Israel. The burning of the wrath of God, which was to be turned away from the people by the punishment of the guilty, as enjoined upon Moses, consisted, as we may see from Num 25:8, Num 25:9, in a plague inflicted upon the nation, which carried off a great number of the people, a sudden death, as in Num 14:37; Num 17:11. הוקיע, from יקע, to be torn apart or torn away (Ges., Winer), refers to the punishm…
As he had at Sinai (Exod 32:27-28), the Lord required swift justice. • execute . . . in broad daylight: The guilty parties were perhaps impaled and left out in the sun (see 2 Sam 21:6, 9) so that everyone could see them and learn from their mistakes (cp. 2 Sam 12:12).
Rashi on Numbers 25:4
קח את כל ראשי העם TAKE ALL THE HEADS OF THE PEOPLE, to judge those who worshipped Peor (Sanhedrin 35a),
והוקע אותם AND HANG THEM — those who worshipped it (not the heads of the people).
והוקע — This is “hanging”, just as we find in the case of Saul’s sons, (II Samuel XXL 6) “And we will kill them by הוקעה unto the Lord”, and there (II Samuel vv. 12—13) hanging is distinctly mentioned (Sanhedrin 34b). It is true that idolatry (the sin committed here) is punishable by stoning, but all who were stoned were also hanged (Sanhedrin 45b).
נגד השמש AGAINST THE SUN — i.e., in the sight of everyone. A Midrashic statement is: the sun made known who were the sinners, for the cloud rolled itself up fr…
