ANIMADVERSIONES The Baal Peor Episode Revisited (Num 25,1-18) I. Literary context The Baal Peor episode (Num 25,1-18) takes place at a critical juncture in the narrative traditions about early Israel. According to the wilderness itinerary in Numbers 33 the site of the event, Abel Shittim (haššitîm, “the Acacias”) in the plains of Moab, is the last stop before Canaan (Num 33,49). It was from there that the spies were dispatched (Josh 2,1) and the crossing of the Jordan undertaken (Josh 3,1). It is also critical in marking the final disappearance of the first generation out of Egypt, following successive chastisements and purges of which the last is described in this episode. The fate of Zimri and Cozbi, of those executed for consorting with Moabite women, and the 24,000 who died of the plague, marked the final link in a process of purification by elimination. It began with the diseased and otherwise unclean persons who suffered the social death of exclusion from the community (Num 5,1-4), others died at Tabera (11,1-3), others again were victims of plague (11,4-34; 14,37), the rebels Dathan, Abiram and Korah were disposed of by a precisely engineered earthquake (16,31-34), and, finally, complaints about these fatalities resulted in another plague and infestation by poisonous snakes (16,41-50; 21,4- 9). For Hosea, Baal Peor also seems to have been the turning point. The Israelites “consecrated themselves to a thing of shame”, and from that point on everything went wrong (Hos 9,10; cf. Jer 2,1-8) 1. That Baal Peor marks the break between the wilderness generations is made unmistakably clear by the census taken in the same location, the plains of Moab, immediately after the plague brought to an end by the violent intervention of Phineas (Num 26,1-65). This second census concludes with the statement that not one of those listed in the earlier census at Sinai appears in it except Caleb and Joshua. All but these two perfervid zealots for Yahweh had died and left their bones in the wilderness (Num 26,63-65; cf. Deut 1,34-40) 2. Peor, or Baal Peor, or Beth Baal Peor (the shrine of the local Baal), in the plains of Moab, the geographical point of the break between the generations, is also the place where the second generation receives 1 For a different view on the Baal Peor episode in Hosea see G.R. BOUDREAU, “Hosea and the Pentateuchal Traditions: The Case of the Baal of Peor”, History and Interpretation. Essays in Honor of John H. Hayes (eds. M.P. GRAHAM et al.) (JSOTSS 73; Sheffield 1993) 121-132. 2 The structural importance of the two censuses is a major theme for D.T. OLSON, The Death of the Old and the Birth of the New. The Framework of the BIBLICA 93.1 (2012) 86-97