Be careful not to make a treaty with those who live in that land. When they chase after their gods as though they were prostitutes and sacrifice to them, they may invite you to eat the meat from their sacrifices with them.
⌞The Lord said,⌟ “When I found Israel, it was like finding grapes in the desert. When I saw your ancestors, it was like seeing the first figs of the harvest. But they went to Baal Peor and worshiped shameful idols. They became as disgusting as the things they worshiped.
“Remember, they were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and caused the Israelites to be unfaithful to the Lord in the incident that took place at Peor. The Lord’s community experienced a plague at that time.
They sacrificed to demons that are not God, to gods they never heard of. These were new gods, who came from nearby, gods your ancestors never worshiped.
With your own eyes you saw what the Lord did at Baal Peor. The Lord your God destroyed everyone among you who worshiped the god Baal while you were at Peor.
Does the sin we committed at Peor mean nothing to us anymore? Didn’t we cleanse ourselves from it? Because of that sin there was a plague on the Lord’s congregation!
But I have a few things against you: You have among you those who follow what Balaam taught Balak. Balak trapped the people of Israel by ⌞encouraging⌟ them to eat food sacrificed to idols and to sin sexually.