Baal-Peor, to which they were seduced by the daughters of Moab.  In the Priestly Code the idolatry has quite disappeared, all but some unconscious reminiscences, and no sin is alleged but that of whoredom, which in the original story merely led up to the main offence.  This is done manifestly with the idea that marriage with foreign women is in itself a falling away from Jehovah, a breach of the covenant.  This change was extremely suitable to the circumstances of exilic and post-exilic Judaism, for in these later days there was no immediate danger of gross idolatry, but it took a good deal of trouble to prevent heathenism from making its way into the midst of the people under the friendly form of mixed marriages.  The version of tbe Priestly Code, however, mixes up with the Baal-Peor story of the Jehovist the figure of Balaam, which is also borrowed from the Jehovist but entirely transformed in the process.  In the form under which he appears in the early history he transgresses all the ideas of the Priestly Code.  An Aramaean seer, who is hired for money and makes all sorts of heathen preparations to prophesy, but who yet is not an impostor, but a true prophet as much as any in Israel, who even stands in the most intimate relations with Jehovah, though cherishing the intention of cursing Jehovah’s people—­that is too much for exclusive Judaism.  The correction is effected by the simple device of connecting Balaam with the following section, and making him the intellectual instigator of the devilry of the Midianitish women; and in this new form which he assumes in the Priestly Code he lives on in the Haggada.  The reason for changing the Moabites into Midianites is not made clear; but the fact is undoubted that the Midianites never lived in that part of the world.

In the Book of Numbers the narrative sections, which are in the style and colour of the Priestly Code, have more and more the character of mere additions and editorial supplements to a connection which was already there and had a different origin.  The independent main stock of the Priestly Code, the Book of the Four Covenants, or the Book of Origins (Q), more and more gives way to later additions, and ceases altogether, it appears, at the death of Moses.  It is at least nowhere to be traced in the first half of the Book of Joshua, and so we cannot reckon as part of it those extensive sections of the second half, belonging to the Priestly Code, which treat of the division of the land.  Without a preceding history of the conquest these sections are quite in the air; they cannot be taken as telling a continuous story of their own, but presuppose the Jehovistic-Deuteronomic work.  In spite of distaste to war and to records of war (1Chronicles xxii. 8, xxviii. 3), an independent work like the Book of the Four Covenants could not possibly have passed over the wars of Joshua in silence.