Numbers 25:5

Verse 5. Judges, who had not been guilty. Septuagint “to the tribes.” The judges, and even private individuals, were thus authorized to exterminate the guilty, as the Levites had been before, Exodus 32:27. While punishment was inflicted but slowly, and some perhaps of the more noble were spared, so that Zambri, even became more insolent. God began to supply the defect of his ministers, by sending the plague among the people, as Onkelos insinuates. Bible.