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The JPS Torah Commentary: Numbers is unavailable, but you can change that!

Milgrom’s exhaustive commentary on Numbers offers penetrating insights into this sacred book. Throughout, he maintains respect for classical Jewish commentators, but does not hesitate to incorporate modern Biblical research. The commentary itself is divided into two parts, “The Generations of the Exodus” and “The Generations of the Conquest,” which are both supplemented by additional forays...

censured for another reason: “They [the Midianites] are the very ones who, at the bidding of Balaam, induced the Israelites to trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, so that the LORD’s community was struck by the plague” (Num. 31:16). Balaam, that is, had advised Balak to demoralize Israel’s fighting force by using Midianite women to seduce it into the service of their cult (see the Comment to 24:14). That this tradition is as old as that of Deuteronomy, if not older, is now demonstrable
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