²⁸ And they were joined to Baal-peor, and took part in the offerings to the dead.

¹⁰ I made discovery of Israel as of grapes in the waste land; I saw your fathers as the first-fruits of the fig-tree in her early fruit time; but they came to Baal-peor, and made themselves holy to the thing of shame, and became disgusting like that to which they gave their love.

³ Your eyes have seen what the Lord did because of Baal-peor: for destruction came from the Lord on all those among you who went after Baal-peor.

¹⁴ But I have some things against you, because you have with you those who keep the teaching of Balaam, by whose suggestion Balak made the children of Israel go out of the right way, taking food which was offered to false gods, and going after the desires of the flesh.

¹⁹ Do I say, then, that what is offered to images is anything, or that the image is anything?

²⁰ What I say is that the things offered by the Gentiles are offered to evil spirits and not to God; and it is not my desire for you to have any part with evil spirits.

⁸ But they are together like beasts and foolish: the teaching of false gods is wood.

⁹ Silver hammered into plates is sent from Tarshish, and gold from Uphaz, the work of the expert workman and of the hands of the gold-worker; blue and purple is their clothing, all the work of expert men.

¹⁰ But the Lord is the true God; he is the living God and an eternal king: when he is angry, the earth is shaking with fear, and the nations give way before his wrath.

⁴ Their images are silver and gold, the work of men's hands.

⁵ They have mouths, but no voice; they have eyes, but they see not;

⁶ They have ears, but no hearing; they have noses, but no sense of smell;

⁷ They have hands without feeling, and feet without power of walking; and no sound comes from their throat.

⁸ Those who make them are like them; and so is everyone who puts his faith in them.

¹⁷ Was not the sin of Baal-peor great enough, from which we are not clear even to this day, though punishment came on the people of the Lord,

¹⁷ They made offerings to evil spirits which were not God, to gods who were strange to them, which had newly come up, not feared by your fathers.

¹⁶ It was these who, moved by Balaam, were the cause of Israel's sin against the Lord in the question of Peor, because of which disease came on the people of the Lord.

⁵ So Moses said to the judges of Israel, Let everyone put to death those of his men who have had relations with the women of Moab in honour of the Baal of Peor.

¹ Now when Israel was living in Shittim the people became false to the Lord, doing evil with the daughters of Moab:

² For they sent for the people to be present at the offerings made to their gods; and the people took part in their feasts and gave honour to their gods.

³ So Israel had relations with the women of Moab in honour of the Baal of Peor: and the Lord was moved to wrath against Israel.