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Did 23,000 or 24,000 die in the plague at Shittim?
Hard question · The law of Moses · raised by 4 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
God orders the guilty leaders to be hanged, and Moses tells the judges to slay those who joined themselves to Baal-peor.
And the Lord said unto Moses, Take all the heads of the people, and hang them up before the Lord against the sun, that the fierce anger of the Lord may be turned away from Israel. And Moses said unto the judges of Israel, Slay ye every one his men that were joined unto Baal–peor.
“Those that died in the plague were twenty and four thousand.”
And those that died in the plague were twenty and four thousand.
Paul warns against fornication, recalling that some at that time “fell in one day three and twenty thousand”.
Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand.
The objection
Numbers says that “those that died in the plague were twenty and four thousand” (Numbers 25:9). Paul, recalling the same sin at Shittim, says that twenty-three thousand fell “in one day” (1 Corinthians 10:8). Both cannot be the exact number.
The answer
The two numbers count different things. Numbers gives the total of those “that died in the plague”, without saying how many days the judgment lasted, while Paul adds a detail Moses does not give: twenty-three thousand “fell in one day”. If the judgment ran over more than one day, both figures are exact: twenty-three thousand on the worst day, twenty-four thousand in all. Paul does not say that only twenty-three thousand died, and a smaller number on one day does not deny a larger total.
Numbers 25 also describes more than one kind of death. God ordered the guilty leaders to be hanged, and Moses told the judges to slay those who had joined themselves to Baal-peor (verses 4–5), alongside the plague that Phinehas’s act stopped (verse 8). Moses’ total may take in everyone who died in the judgment, while Paul counts those who fell in a single day. Keil and Delitzsch thought Paul followed a Jewish reading that set aside a thousand of the total as those executed by the judges.
Other answers Christians give
Round numbers
The true figure may have lain between the two, say 23,500, with Moses giving the round number above and Paul the round number below. Bengel suggested this, and Jamieson-Fausset-Brown repeats it.
The golden calf
Some think Paul has in mind the plague after the golden calf (Exodus 32:35), since he has just quoted Exodus 32:6 in verse 7. But verse 8 speaks of fornication, which points to Shittim (Numbers 25:1), and so Gill, Clarke and Jamieson-Fausset-Brown all connect the verse with Numbers 25.
Still open
Christian scholars agree that the figures can be reconciled, but they differ on which explanation is best.
From the classic commentators
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 thousandJohn Gill, Exposition of the Bible, on 1 Corinthians 10:8
probably from a traditional interpretation of the schools of the scribes, according to which a thousand were deducted from the twenty-four thousand who perished, as being the number of those who were hanged by the judgesKeil and Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, on Numbers 25:9
Sources
- John Gill, Exposition of the Bible: 1 Corinthians 10, at Bible Hub
- Keil and Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament: Numbers 25, at Bible Hub
- Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary: 1 Corinthians 10 (HelloAO)