I discovered Israel like grapes in the wilderness. I saw your ancestors like the first fruit of the fig tree in its first season. But they went to Baal-peor, consecrated themselves to Shame, , and became abhorrent, like the thing they loved.
‘Yet they are the ones who, at Balaam’s advice, incited the Israelites to unfaithfulness against the Lord in the Peor incident, so that the plague came against the Lord’s community.
But among them there was not one of those who had been registered by Moses and the priest Aaron when they registered the Israelites in the Wilderness of Sinai.
‘ “Then I said to their children in the wilderness, ‘Don’t follow the statutes of your fathers, defile yourselves with their idols, or keep their ordinances.