3 Your eyes have seen what the Lord did because of Baal-peor: for destruction came from the Lord on all those among you who went after Baal-peor.
Now when Israel was living in Shittim the people became false to the Lord, doing evil with the daughters of Moab: For they sent for the people to be present at the offerings made to their gods; and the people took part in their feasts and gave honour to their gods. So Israel had relations with the women of Moab in honour of the Baal of Peor: and the Lord was moved to wrath against Israel. Then the Lord said to Moses, Take all the chiefs of the people, hanging them up in the sun before the Lord, so that the wrath of the Lord may be turned from Israel. So Moses said to the judges of Israel, Let everyone put to death those of his men who have had relations with the women of Moab in honour of the Baal of Peor. Then one of the children of Israel came to his brothers, taking with him a woman of Midian, before the eyes of Moses and all the meeting of the people, while they were weeping at the door of the Tent of meeting. And Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, seeing it, got up from among the people and took a spear in his hand, And went after the man of Israel into the tent, driving the spear through the two of them, through the man of Israel and through the stomach of the woman. So the disease was stopped among the children of Israel. But twenty-four thousand of them had come to their death by the disease.
But among all these was not one of those numbered by Moses and Aaron the priest when the children of Israel were numbered in the waste land of Sinai.
Was not the sin of Baal-peor great enough, from which we are not clear even to this day, though punishment came on the people of the Lord,
And they were joined to Baal-peor, and took part in the offerings to the dead. So they made him angry by their behaviour; and he sent disease on them.
I made discovery of Israel as of grapes in the waste land; I saw your fathers as the first-fruits of the fig-tree in her early fruit time; but they came to Baal-peor, and made themselves holy to the thing of shame, and became disgusting like that to which they gave their love.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Deuteronomy 4
Commentary on Deuteronomy 4 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 4
In this chapter we have,
Deu 4:1-40
This most lively and excellent discourse is so entire, and the particulars of it are so often repeated, that we must take it altogether in the exposition of it, and endeavour to digest it into proper heads, for we cannot divide it into paragraphs.
Now let all these arguments be laid together, and then say whether religion has not reason on its side. None cast off the government of their God but those that have first abandoned the understanding of a man.
Deu 4:41-49
Here is,