Numbers 25:9

Twenty and four thousand St. Paul mentions only twenty and three thousand, who, he says, fell in one day, 1 Corinthians 10:8. But it seems that one thousand were slain by the judges, (Numbers 25:5,) and twenty- three thousand by the hand of God. For what we render plague does not signify pestilence only, but any other sudden stroke. Thus did the people fall by their own wickedness, whom Balaam and Balak could never have harmed any other way.