Quietly Great: Phinehas
Rusty Miller
Who are the great leaders of the children of Israel?
We can list them pretty easily, can’t we?
Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Samuel, David, Hezekiah,
Phinehas, Josiah.
Phinehas?
While the others on that list are all well known to us,
Phinehas is not, but it is God who proclaims Phinehas
a great leader and deliverer of His people. Whenever
God commends someone in scripture, it is important
for us to take note.
So, who was Phinehas?
Phinehas was the son of Eleazar and grandson of
Aaron. He was therefore, in the line of Aaronic priests,
but it is not in the performance of his priestly duties that
Phinehas shines. In the 25th chapter of Numbers, the
people of Israel are camped at Shittim, and Moses tells
us that they began “to play the harlot with the daughters
of Moab” (v. 1). There is a great deal involved in that
phrase, as it conveys not just that they committed
fornication, but also that they worshipped and sacrificed
to the idols of Moab, angering Jehovah, who had
rescued them from Egyptian bondage and had brought
them through the wilderness and to the edge of the
promised land.
God commanded the execution of those who had
caused them to go astray, and as those executions
were being carried out, the leaders of Israel stood
weeping at the tent of meeting (vv. 4-6). As the
leadership watched, an Israelite named Zimri brought
a princess of Moab into his tent. Seeing such a
blatantly defiant act of sin, Phinehas grabbed a spear,
ran to the man’s tent and pierced both the man and the
woman through.
At this point, God speaks, “Phinehas the son of
Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, has turned away
My wrath from the sons of Israel in that he was jealous
with My jealousy among them, so that I did not destroy
the sons of Israel in My jealousy. Therefore say,
‘Behold, I give him My covenant of peace; and it shall
be for him and his descendants after him, a covenant
of a perpetual priesthood, because he was jealous for
his God and made atonement for the sons of Israel (vv.
11-13).’”
The number of Israelites who died because of this
harlotry was 24,000, but it is clear from Numbers 25
that it could have been many more if not for the
zealousness of Phinehas, and God remembered
Phinehas again when he recounted the rebellious
nature of the Israelites in the 106th Psalm. In fact, there
the actions of Phinehas are said to have been “reckoned
to him for righteousness (Ps. 106:31).”
What do we learn from the story of Phinehas?
Clearly, the message is not that we should take the law
into our hands, acting as some kind of avenger for God,
even though the story has been unfortunately interpreted
that way by some. First, Phinehas was a priest,
with some duty to judge and enforce God’s commandments.
Second, Zimri was supposed to be a child of
God. Finally, we live under a different system, one that
commands us to obey civil authorities (Rom. 13:1-7; 1
Pet. 2:13-17). So, God is not calling us to take up
spears and run sinners through. What then?
What we should take from Phinehas is the great
sorrow caused by sin. Phinehas was wounded by this
blatant disregard for God’s word, and because he
cared so much for that word, he took action. We too,
should be hurt when we see God’s word ignored by His
people, and we should not be timid in speaking out
against any sin. We cannot allow sin to go unchallenged.
Phinehas went on to lead the warriors of Israel
against the Midianites (Num. 31), to be a wise judge in
the matter of the altar at Gilead (Josh. 22), and served
to guard the tent of meeting (1 Chr. 9:20), so his care
for the things of God was not a singular action but a
lifetime endeavor. So should ours be.
You and I may never be mentioned among the
great leaders of God’s people, but if we are zealous for
God’s word, and act against sin, God will take notice,
just as He did with Phinehas. And that notice is what we
should all be striving for.