Parshat Pinhas 5774

13 Tamuz 5774
Erev Shabbat Kodesh


Parashat Pinchas: The meaning of compassion
by Daniel Pinner

This has been a difficult week, a depressing week, a demoralising week. We have a general rule that no Torah-reading ends on a depressing note, which is the reason that when, in public reading, we conclude the Books of Isaiah (Haftarah of Shabbat Rosh Chodesh), Malachi (Haftarah of Shabbat ha-Gadol), Lamentations (on the 9th of Av), and Ecclesiastes (on Shabbat of Chol ha-Mo’ed Sukkot), we always repeat the penultimate verse of each of these Books: each of them ends with a negative idea, so we repeat the previous verse in order to conclude with a more pleasant theme.

But last week’s Parashah breaks that rule. Parashat Balak concludes with the words, “And those [Jews] who died in the plague were twenty-four thousand” (Numbers 25:9). This final verse, the death of 24,000 Jews – equivalent to all the Jews who have ever been killed in combat and terrorist attacks in Israel since independence, or equivalent to two days in Auschwitz – has been reverberating in our ears since last Shabbat morning.

This has been a gloomy week on other levels too. We were still reeling from the kidnapping and murder of Naftali Fraenkel, Gil-Ad Shaer, and Eyal Yifrah Hy”d when an Arab boy was found murdered, in what appears to have been a revenge attack committed by Jews against a random Arab, and the country exploded with Arab violence directed against random Jews wherever they could find them. This latest round of Arab riots has called Israeli sovereignty over the Galilee and half of Jerusalem into question.

Last Monday was the 9th of Tammuz, the date that Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian army in the year 3338 (586 B.C.E.) breached the walls of Jerusalem (2 Kings 25:1-3, Jeremiah 39:5). This date was observed as a fast day throughout the Babylonian exile and until the Second Temple was rebuilt (Rosh ha-Shanah 18b; Tur, Orach Chaim 549). When the Romans breached the walls of Jerusalem on the 17th of Tammuz 3828 (68 C.E.), the fast was moved to that date to commemorate both destructions together; but in any event, this week we already began to hear the echoes of the impending Three Weeks of mourning.

Monday, the 9th of Tammuz, was also the yahrtzeit of seven Jews who were murdered at the French Hill hitch-hiking station by an Arab suicide terrorist twelve years ago in 5762 (2002).

Meanwhile the genocidal psychopaths of the Hamas, to whom the Israeli government handed the Gaza region 7 years ago, yet again intensified their missile attacks against Israel, and yet again the Israeli government responded by giving an ultimatum…and waiting…and waiting…and when the ultimatum expired, waiting yet another few days, and eventually giving a rather insipid and restrained response – a response whose stated purpose is not victory over the Hamas, but merely “conflict management”.

As I write these words, the confrontations – in Gaza against the Hamas and in the rest of the country against the Arabs who live among us – are continuing. We can live in hope, though our government has a clear policy of not wanting victory over the Arab enemy on our borders and in our midst.

And then this Shabbat comes Parashat Pinchas. By killing the Jewish prince Zimri son of Salu and his Midianite paramour, the princess Cozbi, daughter of Zur, Pinchas stopped the plague – with which last week’s Parashah concluded and which killed 24,000 Jews – from spreading.

Parashat Pinchas opens with the words, “Hashem spoke to Moshe saying: Pinchas son of Elazar son of Aaron the Kohen has turned back My fury from upon the Children of Israel by being zealous for My zealousness in their midst, so I did not exterminate the Children of Israel in My zealousness. Therefore say: I hereby give him My covenant of peace” (Numbers 25:10-12).

The Ohr ha-Chayim (Rabbi Chayim ben Atar, Morocco and Israel, 1696-1743) picks up on the phrase “Therefore say: I hereby give him My covenant…”, and asks just who was commanded to say what to whom and why. “Apparently He intended hereby that [Moshe] should tell Israel of what transpired, in order that they acknowledge the beneficence that Pinchas had wrought for them, and they would not hate him for having killed a national leader…” (commentary to verse 10).

This is eminently logical. After all, Zimri was known as a prince of the Tribe of Simeon, while Pinchas was all but unknown. Who was this private citizen, this hothead, this fanatic, to pass judgement on a Tribal leader? Who knew what repercussions might ensue?

Moshe himself had to vindicate Pinchas in the sight of the entire nation.

The Ohr ha-Chayim continues: “‘…turned back My fury’ – the purpose of informing them of this may be so they would not think that Hashem turned back His fury without anyone earning this merit to overcome the attribute of justice, and Moshe might thereby have drawn the conclusion that Hashem [habitually] acts this way. Therefore Hashem informed him that it was Pinchas who was the reason for Hashem’s fury being turned back…” (commentary to verse 11).

Indeed, had God Himself not have informed them, the Children of Israel could not have been aware that they owed their very survival to this hot-headed zealot who took it upon himself to kill a national leader who was publicly collaborating with an enemy leader. Of course Pinchas would then have been widely hated and unjustifiably excoriated as a murderer.

Yes – Israel’s guidance and lessons and moral instruction really needed to be ratified by God Himself. It was not sufficient that Pinchas was vindicated (retroactively) for killing Zimri and Cozbi; that justification had to be visible to all. God had to instruct Moshe: “Therefore say: I hereby give him My covenant of peace” – say to all the Children of Israel (following the Ohr ha-Chayim), so that all will know that he was justified.

The Ramban (Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, Spain and Israel, 1195-c.1270) in his commentary here says similarly: “He [God] commanded [Moshe] to inform Israel that he [Pinchas] is a Kohen for eternity; the meaning of ‘therefore say..’ is that he had to proclaim this in Israel”.

The Targum Yonatan has a very different interpretation, which nevertheless agrees that God had to sanctify Pinchas and his actions in public. According to Targum Yonatan, God told Moshe: “Swear to him [Pinchas] in My Name: I hereby decree My covenant of peace with him, and I will make him a messenger who will live and endure forever, who will herald the redemption at the End of Days”.

There can be no greater and more public ratification of Pinchas than appointing him to “herald the redemption at the End of Days”. This, of course, is another way of expressing the idea that Pinchas is Eliyahu (Elijah), the prophet who will herald the Mashiach (Malachi 3:23-24); the identification of Pinchas with Eliyahu is a recurrent theme (see Yalkut Shimoni, Numbers 771; Zohar, Volume 2, Ki Tissa 190a; Targum Yonatan, Exodus 6:18).

The meaning of the name Pinchas is uncertain. A simple reading suggests pi nachash (the mouth of the snake), or maybe pi nechoshet (mouth of brass) – denoting one who speaks fearlessly.

Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch (Germany, 1808-1888), commenting on Numbers 25:11, notes that the yud in this particular occurrence of the name Pinchas is written smaller than the other letters (in Masoretic nomenclature, yud ze’ira), and suggests that maybe his name was originally written without the yud (compare 1 Samuel 1:3), but the yud was added after his energetic stepping forward. Rabbi Hirsch relates nun-chet-samech (the second half of “Pinchas”) to the root nun-chet-tzaddi, “nachatz”, meaning to urge on. Hence Pinchas connotes “my mouth, the mouth of God, urged me to do it”. (Maybe Rabbi Hirsch reads peh-yud both as pi, “my mouth”, and also peh-Yud, “the mouth of Hashem”.)

I suggest an alternative meaning of the name Pinchas:

As we already noted, last week’s Parashah ended with 24,000 Jews dying in the plague before Pinchas stopped the plague by killing Zimri and Cozbi. The nation numbered about 600,000 men (Numbers 26:51), so assuming a similar number of women the overall adult Jewish population was about 1,200,000. When Pinchas killed Zimri and Cozbi, he therefore saved the lives of 1,200,000 Jews.

Hence Pinchas connotes pi nun chas (he had compassion on 50 times as many): 24,000 Jews died in the plague, but 50 times as many – 1,200,000 Jews – survived thanks to Pinchas.

I find support for this in the Ramban’s commentary to Numbers 25:12: “God informed Moshe that He would pay a goodly reward to Pinchas for his zeal in being zealous for his God, and for the tzedaka (‘righteousness, justice’) that he had done with Israel by atoning for them, so that they did not all die in the plague”.

In this specific instance, killing Zimri and Cozbi was the greatest compassion and the greatest justice. For sure, had Pinchas asked a Beit Din (a halachic court) if he could kill them, the court would have forbidden him; Pinchas could only be justified in killing Zimri and Cozbi in the heat of righteous wrath, only in the heat of the moment, only at the instant of the sin (Rambam, Laws of Forbidden Relationships 12:5; Aruch ha-Shulchan, Even ha-Ezer 16:5).

And had Zimri killed Pinchas he would have been exonerated in court, because when Pinchas was coming after Zimri to kill him, Zimri had the right to self-defence (Sanhedrin 82a; Minchat Chinuch, Mitzvah #296; Rambam, Laws of Forbidden Relationships 12:5; Aruch ha-Shulchan, Choshen Mishpat 425:11)

Pinchas knew that by killing a Jewish national leader and a Midianite national leader he was risking his life. And he also knew that under these specific circumstances, this was the greatest compassion possible on the entire Jewish nation. And because he risked his life for the sake of God and the nation, God rewarded him with His covenant of eternal peace.