translation_id: net-engnet

book_id: NUM

label: NET translator note

text: This first preterite is subordinated to the next as a temporal clause; it is not giving a parallel action, but the setting for the event.


text: The verb simply says “they called,” but it is a feminine plural. And so the women who engaged in immoral acts with Hebrew men invited them to their temple ritual.


text: The verb is “yoked” to Baal-peor. The word is unusual, and may suggest the physical, ritual participation described below. It certainly shows that they acknowledge the reality of the local god. sn The evidence indicates that Moab was part of the very corrupt Canaanite world, a world that was given over to the fertility ritual of the times.


text: Heb “in the sun.” This means in broad daylight.


text: Heb “slay – a man his men.” The imperative is plural, and so “man” is to be taken collectively as “each of you men.”


text: The verse begins with the deictic particle וְהִנֵּה ( vÿhinneh ), pointing out the action that was taking place. It stresses the immediacy of the action to the reader.


text: Or “to his family”; or “to his clan.”


text: Heb “before the eyes of Moses and before the eyes of.”


text: The vav ( ו ) at the beginning of the clause is a disjunctive because it is prefixed to the nonverbal form. In this context it is best interpreted as a circumstantial clause, stressing that this happened “while” people were weeping over the sin.


text: The first clause is subordinated to the second because both begin with the preterite verbal form, and there is clearly a logical and/or chronological sequence involved.


text: The word קֻבָּה ( qubbah ) seems to refer to the innermost part of the family tent. Some suggest it was in the tabernacle area, but that is unlikely. S. C. Reif argues for a private tent shrine (“What Enraged Phinehas? A Study of Numbers 25:8 ,” JBL 90 [1971]: 200-206).


text: Heb “and he thrust the two of them the Israelite man and the woman to her belly [lower abdomen].” Reif notes the similarity of the word with the previous “inner tent,” and suggests that it means Phinehas stabbed her in her shrine tent, where she was being set up as some sort of priestess or cult leader. Phinehas put a quick end to their sexual immorality while they were in the act.


text: Heb “he was zealous with my zeal.” The repetition of forms for “zeal” in the line stresses the passion of Phinehas. The word “zeal” means a passionate intensity to protect or preserve divine or social institutions.


text: The word for “zeal” now occurs a third time. While some English versions translate this word here as “jealousy” (KJV, ASV, NASB, NRSV), it carries the force of God’s passionate determination to defend his rights and what is right about the covenant and the community and parallels the “zeal” that Phinehas had just demonstrated.


text: Heb “say.”


text: Here too the grammar expresses an imminent future by using the particle הִנְנִי ( hinni ) before the participle נֹתֵן ( noten ) – “here I am giving,” or “I am about to give.”


text: Or “my pledge of friendship” (NAB), or “my pact of friendship” (NJPS). This is the designation of the leadership of the priestly ministry. The terminology is used again in the rebuke of the priests in .


text: The motif is reiterated here. Phinehas was passionately determined to maintain the rights of his God by stopping the gross sinful perversions.


text: Heb “a father’s house.” So also in v. 15 .


text: Heb “head.”


text: The form is the infinitive absolute used in place of a verb here; it clearly is meant to be an instruction for Israel. The idea is that of causing trouble, harassing, vexing Midian. The verb is repeated as the active participle in the line, and so the punishment is talionic.


text: This is the same word as that translated “treachery.”