Title: Did Pinchas Deserve The Priesthood

Major Focus: Pinchas

Minor Focus: Reward and Punishment

Abstract: Pinchas killed Zimri and Cozbi in cold-blood. Why did God reward him with the priesthood?

Format: Rabbinic Argument

"And God spoke unto Moses saying: Pinchas the son of Elazar, the son of Aaron the priest, has turned My wrath away from the Children of Israel...And he shall have it, and his seed after him, even the covenant of an ever-lasting priesthood; because he was zealous for his God, and made an atonement for the Children of Israel."

Numbers 25:10-11 and 13

Pinchas killed Zimri and Cozbi in cold-blood. Why did God reward him with the priesthood?
1. Baruch Epstein: How do we know that Pinchas didn't kill them for selfish reasons and then claimed that he did it for the sake of God? We might have thought this, right? This is why the Torah has to tell us God was pleased with what he had done.
2. Abravanel: God was worried that Zimri's family would come and kill Pinchas for what he had done. God made Pinchas into a priest to protect him from being killed in revenge for what he did.
3. Naphtali Zvi Yehuda Berlin: God made Pinchas a priest in order to protect him from himself, from the evil that is inside every person. Once a person has killed another human being, where there was no trial or judgment, that person develops a hunger for the excitement of killing and will want to do it again. God wanted to protect Pinchas from such an evil thought inside of him.

Text Background: Pinchas, the grandson of Aaron the High Priest, turned away God's anger by killing two people engaged in a public display of immorality. For this act, Pinchas was promised that the priesthood would stay in his family forever.

Objective: There clearly is a problem in trying to understand why God would reward Pinchas for having murdered (executed?) two people in cold-blood. The Rabbis have even suggested that the act of zeal itself, and the subsequent reward of the priesthood, are separated into two different week's readings because of the horror of it, and so that people should not be too quick to realize that there was a reward in it for Captain Pinchas.

Suggestion: Have students first read a comment, explain its meaning in their own words, defend or attack the argument from their personal perspective, and challenge them to think.

Baruch Epstein:

1. Why would Pinchas have killed those two people for selfish reasons? What might he get out of it?
2. The priesthood job is very hard work and a lot of responsibility. Why didn't God just give Pinchas money or a treasure if truly pleased with what he did?

Abravanel:

1. Why might God have been so worried about revenge from Prince Zimri's family, after all didn't they have the Torah rules now which say that law and courts take the place of personal revenge?
2. How would being a priest protect Pinchas from revenge seekers? Would revenge seekers really care who he was?

Naphtali Zvi Yehuda Berlin:

1. Why was God worried that Pinchas might want to kill someone again?
2. If a person does sometimes have very angry feelings inside of them, angry enough to think about killing, does that make them an evil person?
3. Where do you think such feelings come from? Can it be normal to have such feelings from time to time?
4. If such feelings get released, like an evil genie from a bottle, and someone really gets killed, why might it be very hard to get the genie back into the bottle?
5. Every once in a while we learn about soldiers who return from war and killing, who cannot control their desire to kill again. What do you think happened to them during the war? What could be done to help them get better and control their angry feelings? How might your solution be similar to what God did for Captain Pinchas, giving him a very important and sacred job to do?