WHOREDOM, faithlessness — the noun, as distinct from the common verb 'to prostitute oneself'. ⚠ Checked against the Hebrew of all five books: the NOUN occurs in the Torah exactly once, at Numbers 14:33, where the sons must 'bear your zenut'. Everywhere else in the Torah the root appears as a verb. It is otherwise a prophets' word — Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Hosea build the whole picture of Israel as an unfaithful wife out of it (Jeremiah 3:2, 9; Ezekiel 23:27; Hosea 4:11, 6:10, none yet on these pages) — so its single early appearance here, in a sentence about the wilderness generation, is the metaphor arriving centuries before the prophets who made it famous. → first discussed at Num 14:33