Deuteronomy 4:3

¹Israel stayed in Shittim; and the people began to play the prostitute with the daughters of Moab; ²for they called the people to the sacrifices of their gods. The people ate and bowed down to their gods. ³Israel joined himself to Baal Peor, and the LORD’s anger burned against Israel. ⁴The LORD said to Moses, “Take all the chiefs of the people, and hang them up to the LORD before the sun, that the fierce anger of the LORD may turn away from Israel.”

⁵Moses said to the judges of Israel, “Everyone kill his men who have joined themselves to Baal Peor.”

⁶Behold, one of the children of Israel came and brought to his brothers a Midianite woman in the sight of Moses, and in the sight of all the congregation of the children of Israel, while they were weeping at the door of the Tent of Meeting. ⁷When Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose up from the middle of the congregation, and took a spear in his hand. ⁸He went after the man of Israel into the pavilion, and thrust both of them through, the man of Israel, and the woman through her body. So the plague was stopped among the children of Israel. ⁹Those who died by the plague were twenty-four thousand.

²⁸They joined themselves also to Baal Peor, and ate the sacrifices of the dead. ²⁹Thus they provoked him to anger with their deeds. The plague broke in on them.

¹⁶Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and so the plague was among the congregation of the LORD.

¹⁷Is the iniquity of Peor too little for us, from which we have not cleansed ourselves to this day, although there came a plague on the congregation of the LORD,

⁶⁴But among these there was not a man of them who were counted by Moses and Aaron the priest, who counted the children of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai.

¹⁰I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness. I saw your fathers as the first ripe in the fig tree at its first season; but they came to Baal Peor, and consecrated themselves to the shameful thing, and became abominable like that which they loved.