Commentaria in Numeros
5. LET EVERY MAN KILL HIS NEIGHBOURS THAT HAVE BEEN INITIATED TO BEELPHEGOR.—“Let kill,” that is, let hang. For this God commanded in verse 4. Moses here commands the princes to inquire into the criminals, and to punish those whom they shall find guilty: whence it is plain that many were innocent. It was otherwise with the golden calf: for all worshipped it; whence all were killed indiscriminately by Moses and the Levites, Exodus chapter 32, verse 27.
Here, therefore, the matter was done judicially, and the sinners, convicted by witnesses, were condemned to the gallows.
How were the guilty convicted here? It is likely, as Abulensis says, that all who were convicted by witnesses of having entered the tents of these Moabite maidens were by that very fact condemned. For their tents here were brothels, as is plain from verse 8. As, then, a soldier or a youth going purposely to a brothel can by that very fact be convicted and condemned of fornication. For entering there gives a most vehement presumption of the crime, which is done in secret, and cannot otherwise than in this way be proved: for who would look upon persons lying in bed? So Phinees, seeing Zambri entering the tent of the Madianite woman, pursued him with a naked dagger to kill him, nor required any other proof of the crime. By going to the Moabite harlots, therefore, they were reckoned to commit harlotry with them, and consequently to be guilty of death, because God had most gravely forbidden the Hebrews, Exodus chapter 34, verse 16, and Deuteronomy chapter 7, verse 3, to contract marriages with foreigners: therefore He had equally most gravely forbidden them to commit fornication with them. For the reason of the law, namely lest they be enticed by them to the idols and vices of the Gentiles, had place as much in these as in those. Whence also among Christians the same penalty is inflicted on adulterers, sacrilegious, incestuous, as on those who wish to contract marriage with married women, nuns, kinswomen. So Abulensis.
Add: by the very fact that the Hebrews went to these harlots there was a great presumption that they ate their things offered to idols, and worshipped Beelphegor; for to accomplish this these harlots were wholly adorned with their idols, and actually led all their lovers to this.
6. AND BEHOLD ONE OF THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL WENT IN BEFORE HIS BRETHREN INTO A HARLOT OF MADIAN.—This was a prince of the tribe of Simeon, Zambri by name; but the Madianite was the daughter of the prince of Madian, as is plain from verse 14: so much the greater was the zeal and courage of Phinees, who slew both. For he might justly fear lest the whole tribe of Simeon should rise against him on behalf of its prince, and stone him.
Josephus adds, for whose credit let him answer, that Zambri wished to take this Madianite woman to wife, and professed it before Moses, and rose up against him. The same Josephus narrates his insolent speech.
Morally, learn from Phinees that zeal is needed to undertake arduous things. Ardour of mind makes one diligent and strenuous, coldness makes one slothful and inert, such as he in Proverbs 26: “The slothful man saith: There is a lion in the way, and a lioness in the roads”; he thinks ants are lions and lionesses in the way of God; but the fervent man esteems even lions as ants, and sings: “If armies in camp should stand together against me, my heart shall not fear.” Hence St. Bernard on the vigil of St. Andrew: “The will of Adam,” he says, “had no strength, because it had no fervour.” If then thou desirest noble victories over the flesh, the world and the devil, be fervent. Palms love fervid regions: so victories demand fervent men. Thou sailest to heaven against the stream; the impetus of fervour is necessary, that thou mayest overcome the impetus of the river. Beautifully the Venerable Bede on Luke 3: “Unless,” he says, “the strain of the mind be fervent, the wave of the world is not overcome, by which the soul is ever called back to the depths.” Nay, the naturalists teach that anger is implanted in us by nature, to be a whetstone and spur of virtue: for phlegm is slow, torpid and sluggish.
Again, see here how God and men punish lust, and reward the avengers of chastity. Plutarch relates in the Life of C. Marius, that Lucius, Marius’s nephew by his sister, tempting the chastity of the soldier Trebonius, was killed by him; Trebonius, accused before Marius, confessed the deed, and, alleging chastity as the cause of the slaying, was crowned by Marius.
Tityus, son of Jove and Elara, accosting Latona for rape, was pierced with arrows by Apollo; they relate that he was cast down to the nether world, and bound there so that he can in no way move himself; the poets add that his liver is torn by two vultures.
Phaon, an adulterer, caught with Sappho, was killed, as Aelian testifies, On Various History.
The Persians, being drunk, when they immodestly handled the concubines of the Macedonians, were slain at a banquet by king Alexander.
Livia, sister of Germanicus, wife of Drusus, son of Tiberius Caesar, her husband being slain, joined to Sejanus, was put to death by Tiberius with Sejanus by most atrocious torments.
The Emperor Valentinian III, attempting the wife of Maximus, a Roman Patrician, was slain by him, who also seized the empire. So Zonaras.
The Argives had established a garrison of a thousand men for themselves: over them was the leader Bryas. He offered violence to a virgin; the same night she, while Bryas was overcome with sleep, deprived him of his eyes. Detected, when it was light, she fled as a suppliant to the people. The thousand men demanding her, the people refused to give her up; wherefore the matter being brought to battle, the victorious people raged against the garrison soldiers with every kind of punishment. So Pausanias in Corinth.
8. AND THE PLAGUE CEASED FROM THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL.—Hence it is plain that a plague of pestilence, or of fire, or some other like was sent by God upon the Hebrews fornicating and idolatrizing, and that before Zambri entered; and that it is a work of piety, not to rage, but to do justice.” So it is indeed. “Nor (as Seneca says) can a fatter victim be sacrificed to God than a wicked man.” And it is rightly said: “He who spares the wicked harms the good.” For this cause they say the Emperor Maximilian I was wont to pass the places appointed for the punishment of the guilty, with reverence, with this solemn saying: “Hail, justice.” For justice is the base and pillar of the commonwealth, and is as it were the evening star, says Aristotle, nay the sun of the world. M. Cato said that “those magistrates who do not restrain evildoers by punishments are not only not to be endured, but to be overwhelmed with stones, lest through neglect of punishment the safety of the commonwealth totter,” says Plutarch.
This is the seventh plague which in this book of Numbers is narrated as sent on the Hebrews for sins: for the first was at the Graves of Lust, where, while the flesh was yet between their teeth, the wrath of the Lord was provoked and struck the people with an exceeding great plague, Numbers 11:33; the second was in Core, Dathan and Abiron, who were swallowed by the earth, and went down alive into hell, Numbers 16:33; the third was on the same day, when a fire going out from the Lord destroyed the 250 rebellious men who offered incense, in the same place, verse 35; the fourth was on the following day, of those murmuring against Moses and Aaron, and saying: You have killed the people of the Lord, and 14,700 were smitten, in the same place, verse 49; the fifth was when, on account of the murmuring about the labour of the journey, God sent fiery serpents among them, Numbers 21:6;
the Madianite woman, and was slain there by Phinees; for Phinees, seeing this plague, to avert it slew Zambri, and he being slain, the plague at once ceased. So Scripture often, after the deed, makes mention of a thing as though already done, and touches it in passing, although it has not before narrated the manner and history of the thing done. Behold here on both sides the truth of that saying of John Pap.: “Zeal purges crime”; and that: “Vengeance soothes and appeases an angry God.” Rightly therefore St. Gregory, homily 15 on Ezechiel, sets up Phinees as an example of zeal and rectitude: “Are we kindled by zeal of rectitude against vices? Let Phinees be set before our eyes, who, transfixing those who were joined together with the sword, restored the people to chastity, and angry appeased the anger of God.”