Numbers 25:9

Those that died in the plague were twenty and four thousand— St. Paul mentions only twenty and three thousand, who, he says, fell in one day. 1 Corinthians 10:8. See Whitby on the place. But we observed before, that one thousand probably were put to death by the judges; and the words, in the plague, do not signify by pestilence only, but by any sudden stroke or destruction. The passage might be rendered, but in that destruction, or desolation, there fell twenty and four thousand. Thus their own iniquity brought that desolation on the Israelites, which Balaam and Balak, with all their enchantments, could never have effected; and as all that generation was to perish before their posterity could enter the promised land, (see on chap. 26: Numbers 25:1.) this terrible excision may be considered as the final stroke of the Divine vengeance on that perverse and devoted race.