Numbers 25:18 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

With their wiles For under pretence of kindred, and friendship, and leagues, which they offered to them, instead of that war which the Israelites expected, they sought only an opportunity to insinuate themselves into their familiarity, and execute their hellish plot of bringing that curse upon the Israelites which they had in vain attempted to bring another way. We see here that we have more to fear from our passions than from the malice of our enemies, and that it is a very dangerous thing to suffer ourselves to be seduced by voluptuousness and the desires of the flesh. This is the application which St. Paul makes of this history in the passage above referred to; where he tells us that “these things were written for our admonition, on whom the ends of the world are come.” Again, the zeal which Moses and Phinehas showed on this occasion, and God's rewarding Phinehas, prove that we must zealously oppose, by all just and lawful means, those that offend God openly; that this is in particular the duty of magistrates and ministers of religion; and that God rewards the fidelity of those who thus express their zeal for his glory.