Posted by 1 Corinthians on Monday, 11 January 2016
1 Corinthians 10:8
Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand.
10:8. A third failure among the privileged Israelites was in the area of sexual immorality. In the Israelites’ case the immorality was associated with idolatry (Num. 25:1-2), which also characterized much pagan worship in the first century. But the Corinthians indulged in immorality in contexts other than idolatry, as the instances of rebuke in 1 Corinthians 5:1 and 6:18 illustrate. As God had brought death to the immoral among the Israelites (Num. 25:4-9), He could do in Corinth (e.g., 1 Cor. 5:5), a sobering thought for the libertines who said, “Everything is permissible” (6:12; 10:23).
A possible solution to the apparent discrepancy in the death count found in Numbers 25:9 (24,000) and Paul’s figure of 23,000 may reside in the phrase one day. Moses and most of Israel were mourning the death of those who had been executed by the judges (Num. 25:5) or killed by an ongoing plague. Meanwhile Phineas was dispatching an Israelite man and Moabite woman in their last act of immorality (Num. 25:6-8), which brought to completion God’s discipline of the immoral Israelites and ended the death toll by plague at 24,000, a number probably intended as a summary figure.
Another explanation of the 24,000 in Numbers (contra. Paul’s 23,000) is that the former included the leaders (cf. Num. 25:4), whereas the latter did not.
Excerpt from:
Walvoord, J. F., Zuck, R. B., & Dallas Theological Seminary. (1983-c1985).
The Bible Knowledge Commentary : An Exposition of the Scriptures.
Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.
