Tafsiran Bilangan 25:18: Tze'enah Ure'enah, Rashi, Kli Yakar & Ramban

“By the trickery” [25:18]. Balaam was a great deceiver. He thought that if they would send a foreign god to Israel to worship, they would certainly not do it. However, Balaam said: we will send them a foreign god that is a mockery and a joke. This is Peor, to whom one shows their rear end. Israel will think that this is no sin because it is a mockery. Our sages said that one is allowed to mock an idol. However, one should not mock other people, but one is allowed to mock the foreign god itself. Therefore, Israel worshiped Peor. They thought to themselves. Since we have only eaten manna and we have no excrement, the manna will harm our bodies. We will become swollen from this. It was customary with Peor that whoever uncovered their rear end before Peor, they got diarrhea. The Israelites thought: we will have a good remedy with this Peor. Therefore, God commanded that they should injure and harm the Midianites, because they caused Israel to sin.⁸Toldot Yizhak, Numbers, 25:18.

Phinehas merited that no circumcision be performed without placing a special chair for him in the synagogue where the child would be circumcised, because he risked his neck for the sake of the Holy One. The Holy One repays measure for measure, because Phinehas is Elijah, who concealed Israelites because of their circumcision. When someone sleeps with a gentile woman, his foreskin grows as if he was never circumcised. Abraham Our Father sits at the gate of the Garden of Eden and whoever slept with a gentile woman, he is not allowed in. Phinehas, who is Elijah, caused that Israelites should not engage in illicit sex with gentile women. Therefore, Elijah comes to every circumcision.⁹The source of this idea is Reshit Hokhmah, Sha’ar ha-Yirah, 8.3. My thanks to Dr. Noga Rubin for bringing this source to my attention.

Balaam also knew that the circumcision disappears from illicit sex with a gentile woman. Therefore, he said: “who can count the dust of Jacob” [23:10]. He saw that Israel would fulfill the circumcision. Therefore, he commanded that they should take away the circumcision from them through illicit sex. It was just that the Holy One should have allowed the nation of Moab to be killed because they gave their daughters to prostitution. However, the Holy One saw that Ruth and Naomi would come from them, so that the royal family of Israel would be established from them. Therefore, the Moabite men should never be allowed to marry Israelite women, but an Israelite man can marry a Moabite woman.

כי צררים הם לכם וגו׳ על דבר פעור FOR THEY SHOWED THEMSELVES YOUR ENEMIES etc. IN THE MATTER OF PEOR — i.e., in that they abandoned their daughters to prostitution in order to lead you astray after Peor; but He did not command them to destroy the Moabites — on account of Ruth who would later on issue from them, just as we state in Bava Kamma 38b.