Numbers 25, 26

Now that the Israelites have made themselves comfortable in an actual town named Shittim, they start fucking around with the Moabite women. I'm assuming it's the men who are running loose with the Moabite women, because no one would tolerate the women doing it. (I assume that Shittim is where shittim wood is found. You may recall this wood as the one used to construct the tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant. Wow. I really am going to kick ass on Jeopardy! in the “Woods of the Old Testament” category.)

The Moabite women not only seduce the Israelite men they convince the men to worship Baal-Peor, who, from what little research I ever do, is their sun god. His name literally means "Lord of the Opening," which explains all the sex.

The Israelite men join the Moabite women in a sacrifice to Lord God Opening. You may recall what happened this one time the Israelites worshiped a god other than God. The Israelites sure don't or else they wouldn't have done it. But surprise surprise! God gets angry. Who could have guessed that?

God wants Moses to kill all the heaven men and hang them facing the sun so "that the fierce anger of the Lord may be turned away from Israel."

I don't know if this actually happens because the action quickly turns to an Israelite man and a Midianite woman walking slowly into the tent of meeting, which is presumably some kind of meeting tent. Phinehas, one of Aaron's sons, takes a spear, follows the man and woman into the tent, and kills them both with one jab. That Phinehas must be pretty strong or that spear must have been quite sharp. Maybe it was a combination of the two.

Regardless, God decides to stop the plague. I know, what plague, right? Beats me, but 24,000 people died because of it, so it must have been pretty bad. You think someone would have mentioned it before.

This spearing satisfies God. He's no longer angry about the strange-god worshiping thing and makes a covenant with Phinehas that his descendants will forever be priests. As far as covenant's go, that's got to be one of the worst.

Even though God isn't angry with the Israelites anymore it doesn't mean he isn't angry. He’s always angry. He tells Moses to treat the Midianites as enemies and to go all Metallica on them and kill ’em all. It turns out that the Midianites and the Moabites worship the same gods and God considers the Midianites as equally to blame for the whole Baal-Peor thing.

Man, this is getting confusing.

God now wants an accounting of every male 20 years and older who can be conscripted. I guess it's hard for god to keep track of who's left after all the wars and the most recent plague and everything. Turns out that there's still a respectable number of men who can fight for Israel. 601,730, to be exact. Later on we learn that there are 23,000 male infants at least a month old. And that's just the males. That means there’s still a lot of people wandering around the desert.

Then God wants Moses to divvy up the land among the tribes, allocating larger portions of land to the larger tribes and small portions to the smaller tribes. I guess that means the Israelites are staying put for a while! Right?