Pinchas & Balak: Calming Zeal

One of God’s primary rules is that the Israelites must shun all other gods.  In the “Ten Commandments” God declares:

You must not have other gods … For I, Y-H-V-H, your God, am a kanna god.” (Exodus 20:3-5)

kanna (קַנָּא) = jealous; zealous. (Adjective from the root kana.)

“That is, the gods of other peoples generally have no problem with sharing their people’s devotions with other deities—polytheism is the ‘default setting’ of the ancient Near East. But that is not the case with Me, God says—I am unusually touchy in this matter, I am a jealous God.” (James Kugel)¹

A jealous God

The anthropomorphic God character in the Torah not only demands exclusive worship, but becomes enraged when Israelites even nod at another god in passing. At the end of last week’s portion, Balak, many Israelite men do more than that.

And Israel strayed at the acacias, and the people began to be unfaithful [to God] with the women of Moab. They invited the people to the sacrificial slaughters of their god, and the people ate and bowed down to their god. And Israel attached itself to Baal Peor, and Y-H-V-H’s nose burned against Israel. (Numbers 25:1-3)

A hot nose is an idiom for anger in the Torah. Whenever God’s nose burns hot enough, people are afflicted with a contagious plague.

This time, the God character’s jealous rage causes a plague even God cannot stop without human intervention. Only a human act of appeasement will halt God’s zeal for destruction and restore “him” to self-control. (See my post: Balak & Pinchas: How to Stop a Plague, Part 1.) At least God retains enough sanity to recognize this, and therefore tells Moses:

“Take all the chiefs of the people and impale them for Y-H-V-H in full sunlight. Then the heat of Y-H-V-H’s nose will turn away from Israel.” (Numbers 25:4)

The God character in the Torah prefers collective punishment. But Moses prefers selective punishment restricted to the actual perpetrators.² So he orders every judge to execute the men under his supervision who worshipped Baal Peor.³

Before the sentence can be carried out, an even more flagrant act of forbidden worship occurs. The son of an Israelite chieftain brings a Moabite woman (in fact the daughter of a Midianite chieftain) into the courtyard of God’s sacred sanctuary and right up to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, in front of Moses and Israelites who have gathered there to weep over the plague. The couple enter an enclosed chamber—either in an enclosure inside the Tent of Meeting itself, or in a small tent at its entrance—and engage in sexual intercourse. Since they choose this sacred space for their deed, it is not merely a  physical coupling, but a religious ritual—in the religion of the Midianite woman. (See my post: Balak: Wide Open.)

A zealous Levite

The high priest’s grandson catches them in the act.

And Pinchas, son of Elazar, son of Aaron the High Priest, saw; and he rose from among the gathering and he took a spear in his hand. And he came after the Israelite man into the enclosure and he pierced both of them, the Israelite man and the woman in her enclosure. Then the plague against the Israelites halted. And the dead from the plague were twenty-four thousand. (Numbers 25:7-9)

As a Levite, it is Pinchas’s job to prevent any unauthorized persons from approaching, touching, or entering God’s Tent of Meeting.⁴ None of the other Levites seem to be doing their job, so Pinchas jumps up. As a devout servant of God, Pinchas is determined to eliminate anyone who blatantly insults God or flouts God’s law. Being a zealot, he stops at nothing, and finds a double murder perfectly justified under the circumstances.

Peace for a zealot

This week’s Torah portion, Pinchas (Numbers/Bemidbar 25:10-30:1), begins right after the plague stops.

And Y-H-V-H spoke to Moses, saying: “Pinchas, son of Elazar, son of Aaron the High Priest, made my rage over the Israelites abate through kano for kinati in their midst. Then I did not exterminate them in kinati.” (Numbers 25:10-11)

kano (קַנְאוֹ) = his zeal, his jealousy. (From the root verb kana, קָנָא = be zealous, be jealous.)

kinati (קִנַּתִי) = my zeal, my jealousy. (Also from the root kana. )

This remark tells us that God was inflamed with jealousy, and started wiping out Israelites with zeal. When Pinchas acted out of his own zeal, God calmed down and did not kill all the Israelites.

Next God tells Moses:

“Therefore say: Here I am, giving him my covenant of peace.” (Numbers 25:12)

A “covenant of peace” sounds like a peace treaty, but God and Pinchas were not enemies. Some commentators have interpreted this phrase as God’s guarantee to protect Pinchas from vengeance by the dead man’s relatives. Rashi wrote that God acted “just like a man who shows gratitude and friendliness to one who has done him a kindness.”⁵

But in the next verse, God equates the “covenant of peace” with a “covenant of everlasting priesthood”.

“And it will be for him, and for his descendants after him, a covenant of everlasting priesthood, inasmuch as kinei for his God and he atoned for the Israelites.” (Numbers 25:13)

kinei (קִנֵּא) = he is/was zealous, he is/was jealous. (Perfect tense of the verb kana.)

Many Jewish commentators have explained that since a priest is not permitted contact with a corpse, Pinchas could not have killed the fornicating couple if he were already a priest. Now God grants him priesthood—and now he must be a man of peace, never killing again.

But Chayim ben Moshe ibn Attar⁶ wrote that “and he atoned for the Israelites” means Pinchas’s action made peace between them and God. And Sforno wrote: “Seeing that he did what he did in full view of his peers so that they would obtain expiation … he proved himself fit to become a priest, whose primary function it is to secure expiation for the sins of their Jewish brethren. As a priest he could continue in the role he had first adopted on this occasion.”⁷

Clearly God approves of Pinchas’s quick killing of the copulating couple. But now that God is in control again and the plague has been halted, God no longer needs Pinchas to be the kind of zealot who kills people for God’s sake. So God makes him a priest.

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Zeal is an extreme enthusaism that not only feels good, but provides the energy to get a hard job done. Sometimes zeal is necessary to make change happen. But unchecked zeal can cause collateral damage.

In the Torah portions Balak and Pinchas, God’s plague seems necessary to get the Israelite men to stop worshiping an alien god. But then God is like a zealot who has gone out of control and cannot stop. Only Pinchas’s quick double killing halts the divine plague.

Pinchas’s zeal is different from God’s. He feels no personal jealousy, or even anger. Nevertheless, if Pinchas continued a career as a zealot, he would present a new danger to the Israelites. So God quashes his excess zeal by making him a priest.

When two zealots are on the same side of an issue, they can egg each another on until they have both gone too far. But it is also possible that one zealot will be more rational and restrain the other. While God is out of control in this week’s Torah portion, Pinchas is merely sitting at his post, guarding the Tent of Meeting from intruders. When the Israelite man and Midianite woman invade God’s sacred spot with a sexual ritual, Pinchas’s decisive action makes the God character blink and regain rational control.

Pinchas’s zeal makes him a violent killer for a moment, but if he had not acted zealously, God’s plague would have killed thousands more. Sometimes zeal is beneficial; other times it does more harm than good.

May we all find zeal when we need it, and may we notice if our righteous anger has burned too long. And may we find ways to help our zealous friends pause for time to find perspective.

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1. James Kugel, The God of Old, The Free Press, New York, 2003, p. 73.
2. See Numbers 16:20-22.
3. Numbers 25:5.
4. Numbers 1:51-53, 3:38.
5. Rashi is the acronym for 11^th-century Rabbi Shlomoh Yitzchaki. Translation in www.sefaria.org.
6. The 18^th-century rabbi who wrote the commentary Or HaChayim.
7. 16^th-century Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno, translation in www.sefaria.org.