Study Desk

Then Balaam said this: "No one can live when God does this.

The Moabite women invited the men to come and join in their sacrifices to their false gods. So the Israelites joined in worshiping these false gods—they ate the sacrifices and worshiped these gods. There the Israelites began worshiping the false god, Baal of Peor. And the Lord became very angry with them.

So Moses said to Israel's judges, "Each of you must find the men in your tribe who have led people to worship the false god, Baal of Peor. Then you must kill these men."

This is the agreement: He and all of his family who live after him will always be priests, because he had strong feelings for his God. And he did what was needed to make the Israelites pure."

They have already made you their enemies. They tricked you at Peor. And they tricked you with the woman named Cozbi. She was the daughter of a Midianite leader, but she was killed when the sickness came to the Israelites. That sickness was caused because the people were tricked into worshiping the false god Baal of Peor."

" Lord , you are the God who knows what people are thinking. I pray that you will choose a leader for these people.

If Joshua needs to make a decision, he will go to Eleazar the priest. Eleazar will use the Urim to learn the Lord 's answer. Then Joshua and all the Israelites will do the things God says. If he says, ‘go to war,' they will go to war. And if he says, ‘go home,' they will go home."

A married woman might promise to give something to the Lord , or she might promise to do without something, or she might make some other special promise to God. The husband can stop any of these promises, and the husband can let her keep any of these promises.

The Israelites were in Moab on the east side of the Jordan River when Moses began to explain what God had commanded:

"At Mount Horeb the Lord our God spoke to us. He said, ‘You have stayed at this mountain long enough.

And now, there are even more of you. The Lord your God has added more and more people, so that today you are as many as the stars in the sky.

May the Lord , the God of your ancestors, give you 1000 times more people than you are now! May he bless you as he promised.

You must treat everyone the same when you judge. You must listen carefully to everyone—whether they are important or not. Don't be afraid of anyone, because your decision is from God. But if there is a case too hard for you to judge, bring it to me and I will judge it.'

"So we obeyed the Lord our God. We left Mount Horeb and went to the hill country of the Amorites. You remember that big, terrible desert that we walked through. We came as far as Kadesh Barnea.

Then I said to you, ‘You have now come to the hill country of the Amorites. The Lord our God will give us this country.

Look, there it is! Go up and take the land for your own. The Lord , the God of your ancestors, told you to do this, so don't be afraid or worry about anything.'

They took some of the fruit from that land and brought it back to us. They told us about the land and said, ‘The Lord our God is giving us a good land.'

"But you refused to go into the land. You refused to obey the Lord your God.

The Lord your God is in front, leading you. He will fight for you just as he did in Egypt.

You saw what happened in the desert. You saw how the Lord your God carried you like a man carries his child. He brought you safely all the way to this place.'