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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Numbers 25:3 - 25:3
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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. הֹוקִיעַ, from יָקַע, to be torn apart or torn away (Ges., Winer), refers to the punishment of crucifixion, a mode of capital punishment which was adopted by most of the nations of antiquity (see Winer, bibl. R. W. i. p. 680), and was carried out sometimes by driving a stake into the body, and so impaling them (ἀνασκολοπίζειν), the mode practised by the Assyrians and Persians (Herod. iii. 159, and Layard's Nineveh and its Remains, vol. ii. p. 374, and plate on p. 369), at other times by fastening them to a stake or nailing them to a cross (ἀνασταυροῦν). In the instance before us, however, the idolaters were not impaled or crucified alive, but, as we may see from the word הִרְגּוּ in Num 25:5, and in accordance with the custom frequently adopted by other nations (see Herzog's Encyclopaedia), they were first of all put to death, and then impaled upon a stake or fastened upon a cross, so that the impaling or crucifixion was only an aggravation of the capital punishment, like the burning in Lev 20:14, and the hanging (תָּלָה) in Deu 21:22. The rendering adopted by the lxx and Vulgate is παραδειγματίζειν, suspendere, in this passage, and in 2Sa 21:6, 2Sa 21:9, ἐξηλιάζειν (to expose to the sun), and crucifigere. לַיהֹוָה, for Jehovah, as satisfaction for Him, i.e., to appease His wrath. אֹותָם (them) does not refer to the heads of the nation, but to the guilty persons, upon whom the heads of the nation were to pronounce sentence.