Expiating Apostasy: Baal Peor, Moses, and Intermarriage with a Midianite Woman

Numbers 25.1–18 tells the story of Baal Peor, a moment lifted up as an example of apostasy and warning for life in the land in Psalm 106, Joshua 22, and Hos. 9.10. The violation central to the story of Baal Peor is intermarriage, for intermarriage is more than sexual relations or idolatry. Intermarriage affirms or forms kinship bonds. Numbers 25.1–18 joins the account of Baal Peor with the story of intermarriage with a Midianite (25.6–18). In this event Moses is confronted for his role in permitting the apostasy and his failure to oversee the people. Furthermore, he is implicated for his own marriage with a Midianite, Zipporah. This article argues that Moses too had yoked himself to the people of Midian. Moses's hybrid and intermarried past is reinterpreted in a new light where Moses's past, synecdochic of Israel's, must be confronted and atoned for, so that a sense of cultural identity can be (re)claimed