For they vex you with their wiles
Not with wars, but with wiles, with cunning stratagems, and
artful methods to draw them into sin, that thereby they might be
exposed to the wrath of God:
wherewith they have beguiled you in the matter of
Peor;
the idol Peor, that is, Baalpeor; which seems to countenance the
notion that Peor was the name of a man, some great personage, who
was deified after his death; now the Midianites beguiled the
Israelites, by sending their daughters among them, with whom they
committed fornication, and by whom they were inveigled to worship
the idol Peor:
and in the matter of Cozbi, the daughter of a prince of
Midian,
their sister; their countrywoman, as it was common with eastern
people to call those of the same country with them their brethren
and sisters: now the Midianites beguiled the Israelites, by
prostituting a person of such quality to a prince of theirs,
which was setting an example to other daughters of Midian to
follow her, and so hereby many of the children of Israel were
ensnared into whoredom, and into idolatry:
which was slain in the day of the plague, for Peor's
sake:
or for the business of Peor, as the Targum of Jonathan, because
of the worship of that idol; not that Cozbi was slain upon that
account, but the plague came upon Israel by reason of their
worshipping of it, and it was on the day that the plague was that
she was slain; by which it seems that the plague lasted but one
day.