Don't make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, lest they play the prostitute after their gods, and sacrifice to their gods, and one call you and you eat of his sacrifice;
I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and traps, whose hands are chains. Whoever pleases God shall escape from her; but the sinner will be ensnared by her.
Likewise when all the Jews who were in Mo'av, and among the children of `Ammon, and in Edom, and who were in all the countries, heard that the king of Bavel had left a remnant of Yehudah, and that he had set over them Gedalyahu the son of Achikam, the son of Shafan;
But the children rebelled against me; they didn't walk in my statutes, neither kept my ordinances to do them, which if a man do, he shall live in them; they profaned my Shabbatot. Then I said I would pour out my wrath on them, to accomplish my anger against them in the wilderness.
I found Yisra'el 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 Ba`al-Pe`or, and consecrated themselves to the shameful thing, and became abominable like that which they loved.
My people, remember now what Balak king of Mo'av devised, and what Bil`am the son of Be'or answered him from Shittim to Gilgal, that you may know the righteous acts of the LORD.*
Your eyes have seen what the LORD did because of Ba`al-Pe`or; for all the men who followed Ba`al-Pe`or, the LORD your God has destroyed them from the midst of you.
Yehoshua the son of Nun sent out of Shittim two men as spies secretly, saying, Go, view the land, and Yericho. They went and came into the house of a prostitute whose name was Rachav, and lay there.
Is the iniquity of Pe`or 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,
Yehoshua rose up early in the morning; and they removed from Shittim, and came to the Yarden, he and all the children of Yisra'el; and they lodged there before they passed over.
But I have a few things against you, because you have there some who hold the teaching of Bil`am, who taught Balak to throw a stumbling block before the children of Yisra'el, to eat things sacrificed to idols, and to commit sexual immorality.