Numbers 25:5
And Moses said to the judges of Israel: Let every man kill his neighbours, that have been initiated to Beelphegor.
Open Numbers 25:5 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Dixitque Moyses ad judices Israël : Occidat unusquisque proximos suos, qui initiati sunt Beelphegor.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- καὶ εἶπεν Μωυσῆς ταῖς φυλαῖς Ἰσραήλ Ἀποκτείνατε ἕκαστος τὸν οἰκεῖον αὐτοῦ τὸν τετελεσμένον τῷ Βεελφεγώρ.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וַיֹּ֣אמֶר מֹשֶׁ֔ה אֶל שֹׁפְטֵ֖י יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל הִרְגוּ֙ אִ֣ישׁ אֲנָשָׁ֔יו הַנִּצְמָדִ֖ים לְבַ֥עַל פְּעֽוֹר
Haydock's commentary
Judges, who had not been guilty. Septuagint, "to the tribes." The judges, and even private individuals, were thus authorized to exterminate the guilty, as the Levites had been before, Exodus xxxii. 27. While punishment was inflicted but slowly, and some perhaps of the more noble were spared, so that Zambri, even became more insolent. God began to supply the defect of his ministers, by sending the plague among the people, as Onkelos insinuates. (Haydock)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
Tertullian On Modesty, Chapter VI
Plainly, if you show by what patronages of heavenly precedents and precepts it is that you open to adultery alone, and therein to fornication also, the gate of repentance, at this very line our hostile encounter will forthwith cross swords. Yet I must necessarily prescribe you a law, not to stretch out your hand after the old things, not to look backwards: for “the old things are passed away,” according to Isaiah; and “a renewing hath been renewed,” according to Jeremiah; and “forgetful of former things, we are reaching forward,” according to the apostle; and “the law and the prophets (were) until John,” according to the Lord. …