Peor

Peor is a mountain in Moab, the height to which Balak takes Balaam for his third oracle and the locus of the apostasy that brings a plague upon Israel. Distinct entries gather Beth-peor (the nearby town) and Baal-peor (the deity associated with the height).

A Mountain in Moab

After the first two oracles, Balak moves Balaam a third time, this time to a high vantage looking down over the wilderness: "And Balak took Balaam to the top of Peor, that looks down on the desert" (Nu 23:28). On that height Balak builds the third set of altars at Balaam's direction: "And Balaam said to Balak, Build for me here seven altars, and prepare for me here seven bullocks and seven rams. And Balak did as Balaam had said, and offered up a bull and a ram on every altar" (Nu 23:29-30).

The Matter of Peor

The mountain's name then attaches to the apostasy that follows in Numbers 25, named simply "the matter of Peor." In the postscript to that incident, Yahweh tells Moses to vex the Midianites: "for they vex you⁺ with their wiles, with which they have beguiled you⁺ in the matter of Peor, and in the matter of Cozbi, the daughter of the prince of Midian, their sister, who was slain on the day of the plague in the matter of Peor" (Nu 25:18). Peor is named twice in the same verse — first for the seduction, second for the plague — so the mountain becomes a shorthand for the whole episode and its consequences.

The memory of Peor reaches forward into Joshua. When the Transjordan tribes' altar is suspected of apostasy, the western tribes invoke Peor as a still-unfinished iniquity: "Is the iniquity of Peor too little for us, from which we haven't cleansed ourselves to this day, although there came a plague on the congregation of Yahweh" (Jos 22:17). The plague at Peor remains a live wound in Israel's collective memory long after the event.