Right after Hashem forgives the Jewish people for the עגל we get the following warning not to allow anything like this to happen again:
כי לא תשתחוה לאל אחר כי ד’ קנא שמו א-ל קנא הוא: פן תכרת ברית ליושב הארץ וזנו אחרי אלוהיהם וזבחו לאלהיהם וקרא לך ואבלת מזבחו: ולקחת מבנתיו לבניך וזנו בנותיו אחרי אלהיהן והזנו את בניך אחרי אלוהיהן:
don’t bow to another god, for Hashem your God is a jealous God, maybe you will make a covenant with a different nation and you will wander (same word as זנות) after their gods, and you’ll sacrifice to their gods, and they’ll call to you and you’ll eat from the sacrifices. You will take their daughters for your sons, and their daughters will wander toward their gods and they will make your sons wander after their gods. Does this remind you of anything? This is Hashem giving a warning which plays out almost to the tee with what happens at the end of last weeks פרשה. The Jews get comfortable in שטים, and they begin to wander (לזנות) after the daughters of מדין. They call to the Jews to sacrifice and they eat from the offerings, and they bow to the gods of מדין. This is exactly the story that Hashem was telling then. The second generation is making the same mistake as their parents made. The עגל happened and the warning was given, but here it wasn’t heeded. And it got so bad that even Moshe didn’t have anything to do but to sit and cry. The leaders of the people were joining in this immoral act, and if Moshe can’t rely on them then he’s stuck. Had פנחס not gotten up and risked his life and had a dozen miracles performed for him, who knows what the end would have been.
A friend of mine Immanuel Shalev points out that the only real difference between the 2 פרשיות is that the order of the עבירות are reversed. By the warning after the עגל Hashem says first עבודה זרה will happen and then זנות will follow, and by the story here with מדין, it begins with זנות and עבודה זרה follows. The truth is that order doesn’t really matter since the two עבירות are rooted in the same source. Both are perversions of a relationship. זנות is obvious, one is taking a holy act and using it for pleasure thereby destroying a sensitivity that is needed for a deep relationship. And עבודה זרה is to a vertical relationship what זנות is to a horizontal relationship. We each have a relationship with Hashem, and when, in the ancient times they would prey to fabricated gods to grant their wishes, or even when we choose to see sources of Power in our lives other than Hashem, that is twisting the vision and connection that we have with the Creator and using it for our own self advancement. It is no coincident that ancient Egypt worshipped the sun god since their irrigation came natural from the Nile and they needed the sun to grow crops, while the ancient tribes in South America primarily worshipped the water god since their economy was dependent on rainfall. Polytheism begins when people can’t see God in their lives and then based on what they need to survive they’ll associate powers that be to those needs, and will then pray to those gods. What they are trying to do is use the gods to help advance their society. This is the ultimate ignoring of the innate relationship that humanity has with Hashem (this was the most awesome thing about Avraham, that he could look at the world and see a Creator but not for selfish reasons).
So, זנות and עבודה זרה are both perversions of a relationship, and two generations failed that test. What does the Torah teach us to protect ourselves? Right after פנחס stops the plague and he gets his reward, Hashem tells Moshe to count the Jews and give them the message that they each matter and are special. I think this is the key to a relationship. Even though we had just bowed to false deities, Hashem immediately makes sure we know that we are special. the very reason why the sin is so bad is because we have a relationship with Him engrained in us, and it’s for that very reason that no matter what He loves us and we are special. And the message is made doubly clear, since counting naturally means that each person is an addition to the nation and the entirety of the nation is built from each individuals number. But in this counting, we get a few digressions from the count and hear about specific people’s stories, some good and some bad. Yehuda’s 2 sons died because they were selfish, דתן and אבירם died because they rebelled against Moshe, and the sons of קרח didn’t die.
I think this is why the פרשה ends with the קרבנות of the מועדים. It begins with the 2 קרבנות תמידים and goes to שבת, ראש חודש, and then the calendar year of holidays. The message is that we have a chance to meet Hashem every day, twice a day. But we also have many special days throughout the year, each one for different people to connect to, and we are meant to see time and a journey on which we connect to Hashem in new and different ways. We are able to constantly refresh our relationship and start fresh.