Note 7 at 1 Cor. 10:8: The Old Testament account of this instance says that 24,000 perished at this time, not 23,000. One possible harmony between these two figures is this. In Numbers 25:4, the Lord told Moses to "Take all the heads of the people, and hang them up before the LORD." Some have interpreted the word "heads" as referring to the leaders of the people which could have numbered 1,000. Then in verse 5, Moses told the judges of Israel, "Slay ye every one his men that were joined unto Baalpeor." This number could have been 23,000, so that when combined with the leaders who were put to death, the total number would have been 24,000.

If this reasoning is correct, it still leaves the question as to how Paul knew this. Such specifics about these numbers are not revealed in scripture. It would seem odd that there were exactly 23,000 or 24,000 people killed in this plague. Therefore, it is very possible that the numbers 23,000 and 24,000 were both approximations, much as we estimate crowds today. We could combine these two inspired accounts to arrive at the conclusion that it was actually between 23,000 and 24,000 people who died in this plague.