Those who died by the plague were 24,000.This seems like a simple verse, but something caught my attention. The term used here is plague. However, there is no plague mentioned elsewhere in the passage. It talks about harlotry, and the Lord's anger against the people, but it doesn't say that there was any plague brought by God.
Instead, God gives Moses an execution order. He tells Moses to have all those who have fallen to Baal executed. While I understand this would result in a serious death toll, it's not a plague in the normal illness definition I've come to understand. Did God send a plague among the people until they had carried out His orders, or was the plague just a term for man-produced in this case? I can't say I like to think about a plague in terms of mass executions, but I can't come up with another explanation.
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