Phinehas

Phinehas, son of Eleazar and grandson of Aaron, is the priest whose decisive act at Peor turns Yahweh's wrath away from Israel and earns him a perpetual covenant of priesthood. He appears across the Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, Chronicles, the Psalms, Sirach, and 1 Maccabees as the paradigm of priestly zeal. A second Phinehas — son of Eli — bears the same name but the opposite character, and his story serves in scripture as a foil to the priestly line that runs through Eleazar's son.

Lineage

Phinehas is born into the high-priestly line. His father Eleazar, son of Aaron, takes a daughter of Putiel as wife, "and she bore him Phinehas. These are the heads of the fathers' [houses] of the Levites according to their families" (Ex 6:25). The Chronicler twice traces the descent: "Eleazar begot Phinehas, Phinehas begot Abishua" (1Ch 6:4), and again, "these are the sons of Aaron: Eleazar his son, Phinehas his son, Abishua his son" (1Ch 6:50). The family burial site at the close of Joshua marks the same line: "Eleazar the son of Aaron died; and they buried him in the hill of Phinehas his son, which was given to him in the hill-country of Ephraim" (Jos 24:33).

The Act at Peor

While Israel is camped in the plains of Moab, the people are joined to Baal of Peor and a plague breaks out. When an Israelite man brings a Midianite woman into the camp, "Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, [and] he rose up from the midst of the congregation, and took a spear in his hand" (Nu 25:7). He follows them into the pavilion and "thrust both of them through, the man of Israel, and the woman through her body. So the plague was stopped from the sons of Israel" (Nu 25:8). The death toll is recorded plainly: "those who died by the plague were twenty and four thousand" (Nu 25:9). The Psalmist preserves the same memory in compressed form: "Then stood up Phinehas, and executed judgment; / And so the plague was stopped" (Ps 106:30).

The man and the woman are afterward named, fixing the act in genealogical record: "the name of the man of Israel that was slain, who was slain with the Midianitish woman, was Zimri, the son of Salu, a prince of a fathers' house among the Simeonites. And the name of the Midianitish woman who was slain was Cozbi, the daughter of Zur; he was head of the people of a fathers' house in Midian" (Nu 25:14-15). The episode is the touchstone Israel keeps returning to as "the matter of Peor": the people are warned that the Midianites "vex you⁺ with their wiles, with which they have beguiled you⁺ in the matter of Peor, and in the matter of Cozbi, the daughter of the prince of Midian, their sister, who was slain on the day of the plague in the matter of Peor" (Nu 25:18).

The Covenant of Peace

What follows the killing is the divine speech that defines Phinehas's place in Israel for all later memory. Yahweh declares that Phinehas "has turned my wrath away from the sons of Israel, in that he was jealous with my jealousy among them, so that I did not consume the sons of Israel in my jealousy" (Nu 25:11). The reward is a covenant: "Look, I give to him my covenant of peace: and it will be to him, and to his seed after him, the covenant of an everlasting priesthood; because he was jealous for his God, and made atonement for the sons of Israel" (Nu 25:12-13).

Sirach gathers the Numbers vocabulary and places Phinehas in a triad with Moses and Aaron: "Moreover, Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, / Was glorious in might as a third, / In that he was jealous for the God of all, / And stood in the breach for his people; / While his heart prompted him, / And he made atonement for the children of Israel" (Sir 45:23). The covenant is restated: "Therefore also for him he established an ordinance, / A covenant of peace to maintain the sanctuary; / That to him and to his seed should appertain / The high priesthood forever" (Sir 45:24). The framing keeps the priesthood in Aaron's line: "the inheritance of Aaron [belongs] to him, and to his seed" (Sir 45:25). At the end of the praise of the fathers, Sirach prays for the renewal of the line: "May his mercy be established with Simeon, / And may he raise up for him the covenant of Phinehas; / May there not be one cut off from him, / And as to his seed [may it be] as the days of heaven" (Sir 50:24).

The Holy War Against Midian

Phinehas's first deployment after Peor is the Midianite war. Moses sends "a thousand of every tribe, to the war, them and Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest, to the war, with the vessels of the sanctuary and the trumpets for the alarm in his hand" (Nu 31:6). The priest who turned away the plague now goes out as the priest who carries the trumpets and the holy vessels into battle.

The Altar by the Jordan

When the eastern tribes — Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh — build a great altar by the Jordan, the western tribes assume rebellion and prepare for war. They send Phinehas at the head of a delegation: "the sons of Israel sent to the sons of Reuben, and to the sons of Gad, and to the half-tribe of Manasseh, into the land of Gilead, Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest" (Jos 22:13), with "ten princes, one prince of a fathers' house for each of the tribes of Israel" (Jos 22:14). Their charge invokes Peor by name: "Is the iniquity of Peor too little for us, from which we haven't cleansed ourselves to this day, although there came a plague on the congregation of Yahweh" (Jos 22:17).

The eastern tribes answer that the altar is not for sacrifice but a witness — "it will be a witness between us and you⁺, and between our generations after us, that we may do the service of Yahweh before him" (Jos 22:27). Phinehas accepts the explanation: "when Phinehas the priest, and the princes of the congregation, even the heads of the thousands of Israel who were with him, heard the words that the sons of Reuben and the sons of Gad and the sons of Manasseh spoke, it pleased them well" (Jos 22:30). His verdict averts a second internal plague: "This day we know that [the Speech of] Yahweh is in the midst of us, because you⁺ haven't committed this trespass against [the Speech of] Yahweh: now you⁺ have delivered the sons of Israel out of the hand of Yahweh" (Jos 22:31). He returns "from the sons of Reuben, and from the sons of Gad, out of the land of Gilead, to the land of Canaan, to the sons of Israel, and brought word back to them" (Jos 22:32). The man who once thrust the spear is here the man who hears out a defense and rules in Israel's favor.

Mediator at Bethel

In the dark closing chapters of Judges, when Israel goes up against Benjamin over the outrage at Gibeah, Phinehas is at Bethel before the ark. "Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, stood before it in those days), saying, Shall I yet again go out to battle against the sons of Benjamin my brother, or shall I cease? And Yahweh said, Go up; for tomorrow I will deliver him into your hand" (Jud 20:28). The same priestly line that mediated at Peor and at the Jordan altar mediates here in the period of the judges.

Custodian of the Sanctuary

The Chronicler remembers Phinehas not only as warrior-priest but as the chief of the gatekeepers in earlier days. After listing "the Korahites" who "were over the work of the service, keepers of the thresholds of the tent: and their fathers had been over the camp of Yahweh, keepers of the entry" (1Ch 9:19), the record adds: "Phinehas the son of Eleazar was leader over them in time past, [and] Yahweh was with him" (1Ch 9:20). The covenant of peace is also a charge over the sanctuary's threshold.

Mattathias Invokes Phinehas

In the Maccabean crisis, Mattathias publicly stakes his rebellion on the Phinehas precedent. Confronting an Israelite about to sacrifice on a pagan altar, he is "zealous, and his reins trembled, and his wrath was kindled according to the judgment, and running on him he slew him on the altar" (1Ma 2:24) — and "showed zeal for the law, as Phinehas did by Zimri the son of Salu" (1Ma 2:26). The cry that follows — "Every one who has zeal for the law, and maintains the covenant, let him follow me" (1Ma 2:27) — gathers the rising. On his deathbed Mattathias rehearses the heroes of the fathers and places Phinehas first among the priestly examples: "Phinehas our father, by being fervent in zeal, / Received the covenant of an everlasting priesthood" (1Ma 2:54). The Numbers covenant is read as still in force: the same reward stands for whoever takes up the same zeal.

The Other Phinehas: Son of Eli

A second Phinehas, unconnected to Eleazar's line, serves at Shiloh in the days of Eli. The text introduces him with his brother: "the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, priests to Yahweh, were there" (1Sa 1:3). Their conduct is the opposite of their namesake's: "the sin of the young men was very great before Yahweh; for they despised the offering of Yahweh" (1Sa 2:17). Where the first Phinehas's zeal turned wrath away, the second Phinehas's contempt brings wrath down. Yahweh sends a sign through the unnamed man of God: "this will be the sign to you, that will come upon your two sons, on Hophni and Phinehas: in one day they will die both of them" (1Sa 2:34). The judgment is fixed on Eli's failure to restrain them: "I have told him that I will judge his house forever, for the iniquity which he knew, because his sons cursed God, and he did not restrain them" (1Sa 3:13). The sign is fulfilled when the ark is taken in battle: "the ark of God was taken; and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were slain" (1Sa 4:11).

The two priests named Phinehas stand at the two poles of the priestly office in scripture. The grandson of Aaron is jealous for Yahweh's holiness when no one else moves; the son of Eli treats the offering of Yahweh with contempt. The first receives the covenant of an everlasting priesthood; the second dies with his brother on the day the ark is captured.