The Baal-Peor Contagion: When Worldliness Goes Viral Text: Numbers 25:1-5
Introduction: The Treason of the Sheets
We come now to one of those passages that makes modern, respectable Christians fidget in their pews. We like our religion to be spiritual, which is to say, ethereal, abstract, and safely confined to the space between our ears. But the God of the Bible is not the god of the Gnostics. He is the God of flesh and blood, of covenants and consequences, of dirt and desire. And here, on the plains of Moab, at the very doorstep of the Promised Land, Israel’s theology gets tested, not in a sterile seminary classroom, but in the bedrooms of foreign women.
Balaam, the hired prophet, had failed spectacularly in his attempt to curse Israel. Every time he opened his mouth to pronounce a curse, a blessing from God tumbled out instead. King Balak was stymied. Direct spiritual assault would not work. But Balaam was a shrewd man, and he knew a back door into Israel’s camp. If you cannot defeat a people by cursing them, then the next best thing is to corrupt them so that they curse themselves. If God will not abandon them, then persuade them to abandon God. And the bait he used is the oldest in the book: illicit sex. As we learn later in Numbers 31, this whole sordid affair was Balaam’s parting advice to the Moabites. It was a deliberate, strategic act of cultural and spiritual warfare.
The sin at Baal of Peor is not a simple case of a few soldiers getting out of line on shore leave. It is a national apostasy. It is high treason. It is spiritual adultery of the most flagrant kind. And we must understand this, because our own generation is drowning in the very same polluted stream. We live in an age that has made a god of the orgasm, that treats sexual desire as the central, defining feature of human identity, and that dismisses biblical morality as an archaic and oppressive relic. But what happened at Shittim demonstrates, with terrifying clarity, that sexual sin is never just about sex. It is always about worship. You cannot play the harlot with the daughters of Moab without, in the end, bowing down to the gods of Moab. The bedroom and the altar are connected by a very short hallway.
This passage forces us to confront the corporate nature of sin, the holiness of God, the inseparable link between worship and ethics, and the solemn duty of the civil magistrate to punish public evil. These are not popular topics. But they are biblical topics, and therefore, they are essential for our health and survival as the people of God.
The Text
And Israel remained at Shittim, and the people began to play the harlot with the daughters of Moab. Indeed they called the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. So Israel joined themselves to Baal of Peor, and the anger of Yahweh burned against Israel. And Yahweh said to Moses, “Take all who are the heads of the people and execute them in broad daylight before Yahweh, so that the burning anger of Yahweh may turn away from Israel.” So Moses said to the judges of Israel, “Each of you kill his men who have joined themselves to Baal of Peor.”
(Numbers 25:1-5 LSB)
The Unholy Union (v. 1-2)
The scene is set with a deceptive calm, but the corruption begins immediately.
"And Israel remained at Shittim, and the people began to play the harlot with the daughters of Moab. Indeed they called the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods." (Numbers 25:1-2)
Israel "remained" at Shittim. There is a sense of settling in, of letting one's guard down. They are on the verge of their inheritance, and in that moment of rest, temptation finds its foothold. This is a perpetual warning for us. Spiritual danger is often greatest not in the heat of the battle, but in the quiet of the camp when we think the fighting is over.
The sin begins with what our culture would call "private choices." The men "began to play the harlot with the daughters of Moab." The Hebrew word for harlot here is zanah, and it carries the dual meaning of both sexual and spiritual infidelity. This is not an accident. In the biblical worldview, these two things are inextricably linked. Israel was in a covenant marriage with Yahweh. He was their husband, and they were His bride. For an Israelite man to join himself to a foreign woman was not just a moral lapse; it was a picture of the nation's heart beginning to stray from its covenant Lord. It was a breach of the first and greatest commandment, acted out with their bodies.
And notice the progression. It moves from the bed to the barbecue. The women "called the people to the sacrifices of their gods." An invitation that starts with flirtation ends with idolatry. This is how it always works. You cannot import a foreign morality without eventually importing the foreign gods that authorize that morality. The Moabite women were not simply sharing their bodies; they were sharing their worldview. The people "ate and bowed down to their gods." The act of eating the sacrificial meal was an act of communion, of fellowship with these false deities. To bow down was an act of overt worship. The private sin has now become public, corporate apostasy.
The Covenant Bondage (v. 3)
Verse 3 summarizes the spiritual reality of what has just transpired.
"So Israel joined themselves to Baal of Peor, and the anger of Yahweh burned against Israel." (Numbers 25:3 LSB)
The phrase "joined themselves" is a powerful covenantal term. It means to be yoked, to be bound together. Israel, who was exclusively yoked to Yahweh, has now yoked herself to a demonic counterfeit. Baal of Peor was a local fertility god, and his worship was a sordid affair, rooted in sexual ritual and debauchery. It was the deification of lust. By participating in these rites, Israel was not adding another god to their pantheon; they were renouncing their husband and entering into a covenant with a new lord, a baal.
This is the essence of idolatry. It is exchanging the truth of God for a lie and worshipping and serving the creature rather than the Creator. Baalism was a nature religion. It worshipped the cycles of the earth, the rain, the sun, and human fertility. It was the worship of the created thing. Yahweh is the transcendent Creator, holy and distinct from His creation. To worship Baal was to collapse this fundamental distinction. It was to say that god is found in the dirt, in the thunder, and in our sexual urges, rather than enthroned in heaven above them.
Consequently, "the anger of Yahweh burned against Israel." This is not the petty temper of a jilted lover. This is the holy, righteous, covenantal wrath of a king whose subjects have committed high treason. It is the fury of a husband whose wife has publicly shamed him and broken their vows. God's jealousy is not a flaw; it is a function of His holiness and His love. He will not share His glory with another, and He will not allow His bride to be defiled without consequence. A plague begins to sweep through the camp, because the spiritual contagion has now manifested as a physical one.
The Divine Judgment (v. 4)
God's response is swift, severe, and public.
"And Yahweh said to Moses, 'Take all who are the heads of the people and execute them in broad daylight before Yahweh, so that the burning anger of Yahweh may turn away from Israel.'" (Genesis 25:4 LSB)
This is a hard command, and it strikes at the heart of our modern sentimentalism. God commands capital punishment. Why? Because the sin was a capital crime. It was treason against the Theocratic King of Israel. Notice who is to be taken: "all who are the heads of the people." This refers to the leaders who participated in or permitted this apostasy. Leadership carries a heavier responsibility. When leaders fall, they do not fall alone; they create a path for others to follow into destruction. Their sin is doubly grievous.
The execution is to be public, "in broad daylight before Yahweh." The sin was brazen, and so the punishment must be as well. This is not about vengeance; it is about justice and purification. It is a form of corporate sanitation. The purpose is stated clearly: "so that the burning anger of Yahweh may turn away from Israel." The judgment on the few is the salvation of the many. A holy God cannot dwell in the midst of a polluted camp. The cancer must be cut out, lest the whole body die. This is the principle behind all church discipline, from a private rebuke to the final step of excommunication. The goal is always the purity and preservation of the covenant community.
The Mediated Execution (v. 5)
Moses, as God's representative, relays the command to the delegated authorities.
"So Moses said to the judges of Israel, 'Each of you kill his men who have joined themselves to Baal of Peor.'" (Genesis 25:5 LSB)
Moses gives the order to the "judges of Israel." This is crucial. This is not vigilante justice. It is not an incitement for a mob. It is the lawful action of the civil government, acting under the direct command of the nation's King, Yahweh. The civil magistrate, as Paul tells us in Romans 13, does not bear the sword in vain. He is God's deacon, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil.
Here we see that principle in its raw, Old Covenant form. The judges are to purge the evil from their midst by executing those under their jurisdiction who have committed this treason. Each judge is responsible for his own men. This is a picture of ordered, hierarchical, covenantal government. The health of the nation depends on the faithfulness of its leaders at every level to uphold God's law.
This command establishes a vital biblical principle: public sin requires public justice. When a society not only tolerates but celebrates what God condemns, it places itself under His burning anger. And the only remedy is a return to His standards of justice, administered by those whom He has placed in authority. To shrink from this duty out of a misplaced sense of compassion is, in reality, the height of cruelty, for it invites the wrath of God upon the entire community.
Conclusion: Fleeing Idolatry Today
It is easy for us to read this story and thank God that we are not like those Israelites, cavorting with Moabite women and bowing to a stone idol named Baal. But we would be fools to do so. Our culture is saturated with Baal worship; it just goes by other names. The idol of sexual autonomy, the worship of self-fulfillment, the religion of "love is love", this is the air we breathe.
Our world has thrown off the restraints of God's law and has yoked itself to the Baal of the sexual revolution. And just like in ancient Israel, this sexual harlotry is inextricably bound up with spiritual harlotry. It is a rejection of the Creator's design and an elevation of the creature's desire. It is a fundamental rebellion against the lordship of Jesus Christ.
The church is not immune. The allure of Shittim is ever-present. We are tempted to compromise with the world, to soften the hard edges of biblical morality, to make peace with the Moabites in our midst. We are tempted to think that what we do in private has no bearing on our public worship. This passage screams otherwise. To be joined to the world's immorality is to be joined to the world's idols, and to be joined to the world's idols is to invite the judgment of God.
The command for us today is not to pick up swords, but the principle of separation and purification remains. The church must exercise discipline. We must call sin what it is. We must warn those who are yoking themselves to the spirit of the age. And as individuals, we must flee idolatry (1 Cor. 10:14). We must recognize that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, bought with a price, and we are to glorify God in our bodies (1 Cor. 6:19-20).
The good news is that the plague that swept through Israel finds its ultimate remedy not in the swords of the judges, but in the cross of Jesus Christ. The zeal of Phinehas, which we will see shortly, was a righteous act that stayed the plague by executing judgment. But it was a shadow. On the cross, Jesus Christ, in the ultimate act of zeal for His Father's house, absorbed the full, burning anger of God against all our spiritual and sexual harlotry. He took the plague upon Himself. He was executed in broad daylight, before God and men, so that the wrath of God might be turned away from us. Through faith in Him, we are cleansed from our idolatry, unyoked from Baal, and joined forever to Christ, our true and faithful husband.