Neither let us commit fornication
To which the Corinthians were much addicted: hence the apostle
elsewhere, in this epistle, makes use of arguments, to dissuade
from it, as he does here, they judging it to be no evil:
as some of them committed;
i.e. fornication; as they did at Shittim, with the daughters of
Moab, ( Numbers 25:1
) which was a stratagem of Balaam's, and the advice he gave to
Balak king of Moab, to draw them into that sin, which made way
for their commission of idolatry, which they committed by eating
the sacrifices of their gods, and bowing down unto them;
particularly they joined themselves to Baal Peor, the same with
Priapus, one part of whose religious rites lay in acts of
uncleanness, and this brought the divine displeasure on them:
and fell in one day three and twenty thousand;
in ( Numbers
25:9 ) the number said to be "twenty and four thousand": and
so say all the three Targums on the place F23, and
both the Talmuds F24 and others {y}; on the other hand,
all the Greek copies of this epistle, and the Oriental versions,
agree in the number of twenty and three thousand; so that it does
not appear to be any mistake of copies, in either Testament. To
reconcile this matter, or at least to abate the difficulties of
it, let the following things be observed; as that the apostle
does not write as an historian, and so not with that exactness as
Moses did; besides, he does not say that there fell "only" three
and twenty thousand, and this beings lesser number than is
contained in his, and so a certain truth; moreover, Moses and the
apostle use different words in their account; Moses says there
died so many, including the heads of the people that were hanged
up against the sun, and all that perished by the sword; the
apostle says, that there fell such a number, referring only to
the latter, who only could be properly said to fall, and not
those that were hanged up: now the heads of the people that
suffered the first kind of death, might, as is very probable, be
a thousand; and they that died in the other way, three and twenty
thousand, which make the sums to agree, and both are expressed by
Moses, under the general name of a plague or stroke; to all this,
that the apostle uses a limiting clause, which Moses does not,
and says that these three and twenty thousand fell in one day. So
that it is very likely that the heads of the people, supposed to
be a thousand, were hanged up in one day; and the three and
twenty thousand that fell by the sword died the next, which the
apostle only takes notice of. Hence the Jew F26 has no
reason to charge the apostle with an error.
F23 Targum Onkelos, Jon. ben Uzziel & Jerusalem in Numb, xxv. 9.
F24 T. Hieros Sota, fol. 21. 4. T. Bab. Sanhedrin, fol. 106. 1.
F25 Midrash Kohelet, fol. 68. 4. Tzeror Hammor, fol. 127. 3.
F26 R. Isaac Chizzuk Emuna, par. 2. c. 36. p. 468.
