Did twenty-four thousand die in the plague, or twenty-three thousand?

Difficult Passages · Numbers in Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles

Did twenty-four thousand die in the plague, or twenty-three thousand?

Paul gives those who fell in one day; Moses, all who died in the plague.

The Passages

Numbers 25:9

9 And those that died in the plague were twenty and four thousand.

1 Corinthians 10:8

8 Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand.

The Difficulty

When Israel joined himself unto Baalpeor, “those that died in the plague were twenty and four thousand” (Numbers 25:9). Paul, warning the Corinthians by the same sin, writes, “Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand” (1 Corinthians 10:8).

The Answer

Preferred: Paul gives the number that fell “in one day”; Moses gives all “that died in the plague.” The two count different things, and Paul’s own words mark the difference. He doesn’t say that only twenty-three thousand died, and the lesser number is contained in the greater (Gill).

Also given: Moses’ number takes in “all the heads of the people,” whom the LORD commanded to be hanged up “before the LORD against the sun” (Numbers 25:4), as well as those whom the judges slew (25:5) and the plague took. Paul’s word is that they “fell,” which suits those struck down and not those hanged. If the heads were a thousand, the numbers agree (Gill).

Neither number is a copyist’s slip. Gill notes that the Hebrew and its Targums read twenty-four thousand, and every Greek copy of the epistle twenty-three; the two were written as they stand.

Sources

John Gill, An Exposition of the New Testament, vol. 2 (1746–48), p. 620, on 1 Corinthians 10:8

so that it does not appear to be any mistake of copies, in either Testament. … besides, he does not say that there fell only three and twenty thousand, and this being a lesser number than Moses’s, is contained in his, and so a certain truth; moreover, Moses and the Apostle use different words in their account; Moses says there died so many, including the heads of the people that were hanged up against the sun, and all that perished by the sword; the Apostle says, that there fell such a number, referring only to the latter … to all this, that the Apostle uses a limiting clause, which Moses does not, and says that these three and twenty thousand fell in one day.

Checked against: Internet Archive scan of the first edition, 2026-10-28