1 Raja-raja 18:39-40

18:39 When all the people saw this, they threw themselves down with their faces to the ground and said, “The Lord is the true God! ¹  The Lord is the true God!” 18:40 Elijah told them, “Seize the prophets of Baal! Don’t let even one of them escape!” So they seized them, and Elijah led them down to the Kishon Valley and executed ²  them there.

Bilangan 25:8

25:8 and went after the Israelite man into the tent ³  and thrust through the Israelite man and into the woman’s abdomen. ⁴  So the plague was stopped from the Israelites. ⁵ 

Bilangan 25:2

25:2 These women invited ⁶  the people to the sacrifices of their gods; then the people ate and bowed down to their gods. ⁷ 

1 Samuel 21:14

21:14 Achish said to his servants, “Look at this madman! Why did you bring him to me?

[18:39]  ¹ tn Heb “the God” (the phrase occurs twice in this verse).

[18:40]  ² tn Or “slaughtered.”

[25:8]  ³ tn The word קֻבָּה (qubbah) seems to refer to the innermost part of the family tent. Some suggest it was in the tabernacle area, but that is unlikely. S. C. Reif argues for a private tent shrine (“What Enraged Phinehas? A Study of Numbers 25:8,” JBL 90 [1971]: 200-206).

[25:8]  ⁴ tn Heb “and he thrust the two of them the Israelite man and the woman to her belly [lower abdomen].” Reif notes the similarity of the word with the previous “inner tent,” and suggests that it means Phinehas stabbed her in her shrine tent, where she was being set up as some sort of priestess or cult leader. Phinehas put a quick end to their sexual immorality while they were in the act.

[25:8]  ⁵ sn Phinehas saw all this as part of the pagan sexual ritual that was defiling the camp. He had seen that the Lord himself had had the guilty put to death. And there was already some plague breaking out in the camp that had to be stopped. And so in his zeal he dramatically put an end to this incident, that served to stop the rest and end the plague.

[25:2]  ⁶ tn The verb simply says “they called,” but it is a feminine plural. And so the women who engaged in immoral acts with Hebrew men invited them to their temple ritual.

[25:2]  ⁷ sn What Israel experienced here was some of the debased ritual practices of the Canaanite people. The act of prostrating themselves before the pagan deities was probably participation in a fertility ritual, nothing short of cultic prostitution. This was a blatant disregard of the covenant and the Law. If something were not done, the nation would have destroyed itself.