פרשה: פינחס · עלייה: ראשון (חסד)

לאמר, to say, etc. To whom was Moses to tell this? He did not have to tell Pinchas as in that case why did the Torah write in verse 12: אמר, "say" if he had already been told all this by Moses? Besides, the sequence of the whole chapter shows that Pinchas had not yet been told of his reward.

I suppose that G'd wanted Moses to tell the entire people that not only had Pinchas not acted highhandedly and they had no cause to hate him for having killed one of their princes, but that thanks to Pinchas' deed the whole nation had benefited immediately. Moses also explained to the people that Pinchas had only succeeded in what he did because he had heavenly assists as outlined in Sanhedrin 82. We will get back to this later in greater detail.

פנחס בן אלעזר, Pinchas son of Eleazar, etc. Why did the Torah have to give us Pinchas' full genealogy here? [the same genealogy has been recorded only 4 verses previously. Ed.] Perhaps the Torah wanted to give his ancestors an honorable mention in this way. Moreover, it is likely that G'd wanted to heal the residual bad feeling that might have existed against Aaron who at the time when he made the golden calf had inadvertently become the cause of many Israelites dying prematurely (compare Exodus 32,35 "G'd smote the people who had made the calf which Aaron had constructed). Now a grandson of Aaron had come and saved many more Israelites' lives than Aaron had ever even indirectly caused to be lost. This is why G'd Himself goes on record saying: "I have not consumed the children of Israel in My jealousy." In order to make all this clear, Aaron had to be mentioned by name. We have been told in Tanna de bey Eliyahu chapter 13 that Aaron rehabilitated himself through teaching the Israelites Torah and performing good deeds. From this you see that in the eyes of the Israelites Aaron had been considered as responsible for the death of those Jews at the time of the episode of the golden calf. The Torah therefore tells us here that Aaron's grandson completed this task of Aaron's rehabilitation posthumously.

השיב את חמתי, "has turned away My wrath, etc." The Torah may have mentioned this to teach us that once G'd's wrath has been aroused it requires a new merit on the part of His creatures to assuage the attribute of Justice. At the very least, we can assume that this is what Moses thought. G'd explained to Moses that in this instance it had been Pinchas' deed which had succeeded in turning away His wrath. The very word השיב in the causative form teaches that G'd's anger did not abate on its own.

מעל בני ישראל, "from the children of Israel, etc." This means that once G'd's anger had descended upon them Pinchas succeeded in removing it from the children of Israel. This is a great compliment to Pinchas. In addition the Torah defines the act which Pinchas had performed as one that caused G'd personally a sense of wellbeing seeing that as long as He was angry and jealous it had caused Him sadness and distress.

בקנאו את קנאתי בתכם, "when he displayed jealousy on My behalf amongst them." Both the apparently superfluous words קנאתי, "My jealousy," and בתכם, "amongst them," are very deliberate. These factors each contributed to giving Pinchas the power to turn away G'd's wrath. 1) Pinchas displayed his personal jealousy on behalf of G'd by endangering his life on account of G'd's honour. This idea is expressed by the suffix ו at the end of the word בקנאו. 2) His jealousy was purely on G'd's behalf, he had no ulterior motive. When man performs a מצוה for absolutely pure motives without the slightest consideration of how the performance of such a good deed might benefit him personally, this is the most beloved מצוה- performance that exists in G'd's eyes. This is why the Torah defines Pinchas' jealousy as "MY jealousy." 3) Pinchas did not do what he did in the confines of his house with no witnesses, but he performed the deed publicly in full view of his whole nation. Sanhedrin 82 describes that Pinchas was surrounded at the time by the whole tribe of Shimon who had surrounded the tent in which Zimri cohabited with Kosbi. This is what the Torah meant when it wrote: "in their midst."

ולא כליתי, "and I did not consume totally, etc." Why did the Torah not abbreviate this report by writing thus: "בקנאו את קנאתי השיב את חמתי ולא כליתי, "when he was jealous on My behalf he turned away My wrath so that I did not totally wipe out, etc.?

The Torah wanted to demonstrate that once G'd's anger had been aroused at בני ישראל, the elite of the Israelites, it could not be turned away without the presence of the three factors in Pinchas' deed we just enumerated. As far as saving the Jewish people from total annihilation, it is possible that G'd would have allowed a small portion of the Israelites to survive even if Pinchas' deed had not comprised all the three elements we described. The prayer of a righteous man such a Moses might have sufficed to accomplish this. However, if the Torah had only mentioned that Pinchas turned away G'd's wrath, without adding that G'd did not annihilate the whole people, I would have concluded that all that the action of Pinchas accomplished was the prevention of the complete annihilation of the people.

לכן אמור, "Therefore, 'say,'" etc. Why did the Torah have to write the word לכן, "Therefore," seeing it goes on to explain in verse 13 "because he was jealous for his G'd?" We are forced to understand the word as an oath. We have learned in Shemot Rabbah 6,4 on Exodus 6,6 that this word is always to be understood as a form of oath. The Midrash uses as its source Samuel I 3,14, ולכן נשבעתי לבית עלי, "And this is why I have sworn an oath concerning the house of Eli, etc." This still leaves us with the question why an oath was required in this instance. Presumably, the oath was needed to reinforce the covenant of peace in the event that Pinchas' children should turn out not to be deserving of the covenant G'd had concluded with their father.

We may also be able to explain this verse on the basis of what we learned in Zevachim 101 that prior to the incident with Zimri Pinchas had not yet been appointed to the priesthood, as, although he was around at the time Aaron and his sons were anointed, he himself had not bothered to be anointed. After he performed his deed of jealousy on behalf of G'd he was appointed to the priesthood. Pinchas could have acquired the priesthood either as an act of forgiveness or as a gift from G'd. In the former event, his deed prompted G'd to forgive him for having failed at the time to have himself anointed. If we see in his appointment now a gift from G'd, we may view it as something entirely new. Just as Aaron and his sons were appointed to be priests, though Amram Aaron's father and his brothers had not been priests, so Pinchas' appointment was something quite new. There is a halachic difference between priesthood acquired as an act of forgiveness and priesthood acquired as a gift. In the fomer case, the priest need not perform an act of קנין, a symbolic act of acquisition of the priesthood; however, someone who had not had a previous claim to the priesthood and was awarded same as a gift must perform such an act of קנין.

Receiving the priesthood as a gift carries with it two disadvantages which the person who receives the priesthood as an act of forgiveness need not worry about. If the priesthood was attained via G'd forgiving Pinchas for an act of negligence in the past, then, if Pinchas were to be appointed High Priest at a future date he would not have to face any challengers. Any challenge would be dealt with as had the challenges against Aaron becoming High Priest. If the priesthood were to be granted only as a gift, the priest in question could face challenges to his promotion just as did Aaron before G'd had intervened. Such a challenge would be reinforced by the fact that Pinchas had killed. A priest who has killed is supposedly unfit to perform his priestly duties. People would claim that inasmuch as the status of the priesthood granted as a gift is limited to the recipient of that gift becoming an ordinary priest, such a priest does not qualify to compete for the office of High Priest. This is not so when a potential priest regains his former status through the act of G'd's forgiveness. Seeing that he had been in line for the office of High Priest before he had forfeited it through negligence, G'd's forgiveness reinstates such a potential priest in his former status. As a result of these considerations, obtaining the priesthood by way of an act of forgiveness from G'd is superior in three ways to obtaining it as a mere gift. 1) No formal act of acquisition is needed. 2) One need not worry about potential challengers to one's promotion. 3) It is an enduring status transferable to one's children and grandchildren as something hereditary.

In His wisdom, G'd decided to accord Pinchas the priesthood as a gift in order to demonstrate that he did not become a priest merely through a hereditary claim to the priesthood instead of a claim based on moral excellence. By appointing Pinchas as priest directly, G'd elevated the meaning of Pinchas' priesthood, made it into something which he could point to as a mark of personal distinction. This is why the Torah describes G'd as saying: "Here I give to him My covenant, peace." In view of our having pointed out that such a gift by definition may not be transferable to one's children, G'd had to reinforce the gift by an oath, i.e. the word אכן, in order to make the appointment as enduring as if it had been acquired through an act of forgiveness. This is why G'd had to add לו ולזרעו אחריו "to him and his descendants after him." The "peace" included that no one would challenge Pinchas' claim to the priesthood and the office of High Priest when the time came. I have pointed out on a previous occasion that the word כהונה is the name of a certain category of souls known as such in the region where the souls are at home. G'd assured Pinchas that his descendants would always receive souls drawn from the pool of souls known as כהונה. This is the mystical dimension of the expression כהונת עולם.

תחת אשר קנא לאלוקיו, because he displayed jealousy on behalf of His G'd. This verse provides the reason why G'd decided to give the priesthood to Pinchas as a gift rather than in his capacity of being the son of a priest. By pointing out that what Pinchas had done, he did on account of his G'd, G'd repaid him by elevating him to the priesthood as an act of honouring him personally. He did this by demonstrating that Pinchas did not have to rely on his ancestry, i.e his father and grandfather the High Priests in order to become a priest himself. ויכפר על בני ישראל, he atoned on behalf of the children of Israel. This means that he re-established peace between Israel and their Father in Heaven that G'd in turn called off the angel of death. Inasmuch as Pinchas had caused G'd to call off the angel of death from his people, his people made a pact of peace with him. Inasmuch as the benefits the Israelites derived from Pinchas' calling off the angel of death from them, in other words a benefit extending from generation to generation, Pinchas' elevation to the priesthood was also one that extended from generation to generation, i.e. כהונת עולם.

A moral/ethical approach to our verse could be based on the statement in Baba Metzia 114, that the prophet Elijah who would usher in the messianic age would be none other than Pinchas (his re-incarnation). Our verse would provide the reason why it would be Pinchas who would perform this task in the future. We are told that the principal function of the prophet Elijah at the time preceding the arrival of the Messiah will be to bridge the generation gap between fathers and sons and vice-versa, harmonising their mutual relationships (compare Maleachi 3,24). In addition to that we have learned in Edioth 8,7 that Elijah would increase שלום, harmony in the world. You will observe that in our paragraph the Torah describes Pinchas twice as being jealous, once in verse 11 and once more in our verse here. The Torah alludes to the jealousy the original Pinchas displayed on G'd's behalf during the time the Israelites were at Shittim, whereas the second reference is to the jealousy the prophet Elijah (Pinchas) displayed during the reign of King Achav when he described himself before G'd as a Kannai, a fanatic on G'd's behalf (Kings I 19,14). There too we find that he repeated the word קנא, "was jealous." At that time, Elijah alluded to the fact that this was already the second time he had played this role of being jealous on behalf of G'd. The Torah therefore mentions here that G'd granted him G'd's covenant of peace.

What is the meaning of that covenant? The word שלום is to be understood as "complete, whole." The first covenant G'd concluded with the first Jew Abraham in Genesis 15, 1-21 contained the promise that Abraham's descendants would take possession of the lands of 10 nations all of which are named in that chapter. Even at the time when the prophet Elijah was active on earth for the first time, the lands of no more than seven of these nations had been given to the Jewish people. When G'd said in our verse הנני נותן לו את בריתי שלום, He hinted that Pinchas/Elijah would preside over the completion of the part of G'd's promise to Abraham which was still outstanding. The vision of Maleachi includes the vision of Isaiah 11,7 and 9 concerning a period when the lion will lie down with the lamb without harming it, etc. In the latter verse Isaiah predicts that from that time onwards "nothing evil or vile shall be done, for the land will be filled with devotion to the Lord, etc. etc."The reason that in our verse G'd does no longer speak of Pinchas' descendants is that when Elijah will return at that time it will be Pinchas' final appearance on earth, his task will not have to be completed by his offspring. The Torah mentions that the covenant G'd concludes with Pinchas also comprises the priesthood, giving a reason for this second covenant which is an everlasting one. By using the introductory word תחת, the Torah refers to Pinchas as also qualifying for this latter covenant on account of two things he had done or was still going to do, i.e. the jealousy he would display on behalf of G'd during the reign of Achav when the Israelites worshiped the Baal and abandoned their G'd. The reason that the Torah added the word לאלקיו here is that it alludes to the sin of idol worship. We know from Deut. 6,15 that the sin of idol worship arouses G'd's jealousy. When Elijah demonstrated the miracles of G'd on Mount Carmel in Kings I 18,39, he did not conclude until the people had exclaimed that the Lord G'd is the true G'd. This is the reason why when Elijah will appear once more prior to the coming of the Messiah it will be during a period which the prophet Maleachi described as a time when "G'd and His name will be one," the mystical dimension of "the Lord G'd is the true G'd."

The word ויכפר, etc. also refers both to the future and to the past. The Torah means that just as Pinchas had atoned for the Jewish people in Shittim, so Elijah would atone for the Jewish people in the future. Basically, this is the function of the priest, as we know from Leviticus 4,20 et al.

ושם איש ישראל, And the name of the Israelite man, etc. If G'd was so interested in our knowing the names of the people Pinchas slew why did the Torah not report this at the time it reported Pinchas' deed in the last Parshah? If the Torah had mentioned these names at that time it could have saved at least a half a sentence here!

G'd has made it a rule not to belittle even the wicked unless there is a compelling reason. We know that in the case of the person who collected wood on the Sabbath and who was subsequently executed the Torah did not reveal his name at all (Numbers 15,32-36). In our instance the Torah revealed the names well after the occurrence because there was a compelling reason but not until after G'd had praised Pinchas for what he did and we have learned of the beneficial effects of his deed. Having recorded that G'd not only approved of what Pinchas had done but rewarded him publicly, the Torah explained that Pinchas had taken very great personal risks as the two victims involved were very highly placed individuals. When the persons for whose sake one displays just jealousy on behalf of G'd are aristocrats, higly placed, this makes the act of sanctifying G'd's name even more meritorious. Although in the process of mentioning their names, the Torah publicly displayed its contempt for the sinner, it only followed approved practice as we know from Proverbs 10,7 "the memory of the just is a source of blessing whereas the name of the wicked will rot." Perhaps the positioning of the names of the victims at this point was meant to hint that if these two individuals had not been so highly placed, Pinchas' deed would not have sufficed to turn away G'd's wrath and bring about atonement for the entire people. When Samael saw to what extent a man like Pinchas despised someone guilty of sleeping with a Midianite, his own power was weakened. Had the individuals in question been ordinary people Pinchas could not have accomplished as much through his display of jealousy on behalf of G'd as the personal danger to which he exposed himself at the hands of the victims' surviving relatives would have been much less.

Perhaps the reason the Torah did not mention the name of the victims in 25,6 where we would have expected it was that at that point Pinchas had not yet carried out his deed but had only planned it. As long as he had not carried out his plan it would not have been seemly for the Torah to reveal the names of prospective victims. Once Pinchas had completed his deed the names of the wicked had to be mentioned in order to publicise them.

המכה אשר הכה, that was slain, who was slain, etc. why was the verb "was slain" repeated here twice? Besides, why did the verse commence by mentioning the nationality of the Jewish victim before mentioning the occasion, whereas when the Midianite woman is named the occasion is mentioned before her nationality is mentioned?

All this can best be explained by reference to Berachot 18 where we are told that the wicked are referred to as dead even while they are still physically alive. The reason for this is that the power of evil, which is another word for the power of death already clings to the wicked. I have mentioned repeatedly that the name people are known by is the name of their soul. G'd placed a variety of "names" on earth as the Talmud in Berachot 7 says about Psalms 46,9: ראו מפעלות ה׳ אשר שם שמות בארץ, "come and see what the Lord has done, He has wrought desolation on earth." The Talmud suggests that we do not read the word shamot in that verse with the vowel patach but with the vowel tzeyreh so that the meaning of the word desolation is changed to "names." When a human being sins his soul becomes tarnished or injured in that the evil he did clings to it. This is the real meaning of Proverbs 10,8 that the "name" of the wicked will rot, i.e. his soul will rot. This explains an enigmatic story in the Talmud Yuma 83 where Rabbi Meir is described as examining people's names and thereby arriving at conclusions about their character. When he and his colleagues arrived at a certain inn they asked the innkeeper his name. Rabbi Meir concluded after hearing the man's name that he was a wicked person. In our situation, a Jew who sleeps with a Midianite woman causes his soul to become tarnished; this is what the Torah means when it describes the name of the Israelite as being מכה, struck by a fatal blemish even before Pinchas had a chance to inflict bodily death upon him. The words אשר הכה, teach that for all practical purposes the man had already been fatally injured prior to Pinchas stabbing him. When the Torah wanted to tell us about what happened to Zimri's soul, it wrote: "and the name of the man who had been struck etc." The idea is that from the moment he committed his abominable act his soul had already sustained a fatal injury. The reason the Torah emphasises: "Israelite," is to tell us that a Jewish soul could not survive an act of such a wilfully committed abomination. As to the physical killing of Zimri's body, the Torah refers to this by the words אשר הכה, "who was struck." The reason the Torah wrote אשר הכה את המדינית, "he who was struck down with the Midianite woman," was to inform us that the soul of the Jewish man was struck down because of his intimate association with the Midianite woman." The act of sleeping with her constituted a fatal blow to his soul.

The Torah also alludes to another point when writing את המדינית. When the Torah describes how the wife of Potiphar tried to seduce Joseph (Genesis 39,10), we read that Joseph refused לשכב אצלה, להיות עמה "to sleep beside her and to be with her." Our sages in Yuma 35 comment that the words לשכב אצלה refer to Joseph sharing her life in this world, whereas the words להיות עמה refer to Joseph's refusal to be her companion in the world to come. If we take this comment as our cue, we can understand the words הכה את המדינית as telling us that the Israelite's being smitten meant that he would not be with that woman in the hereafter. We must assume that Zimri died before becoming a penitent as Pinchas stabbed him while he was engaged in the act. This answers the question why the word: "he was struck" was repeated in the Torah's description of events. It also explains why the word איש ישראל had to precede the report of his being struck to teach us that the name, i.e. the soul had been struck before the body was killed. When the Torah got around to mentioning the name of the Midianite woman, the fact that she was struck is mentioned only once, as she did not have a soul rooted in holy domains that she could be deprived of. She was also not especially mentioned prior to what happened to her as she was considered as dead already while she was fully alive; essentially what happened to her was nothing new, except that her death became manifest. We have mentioned on repeated occasions that the names of the various cults which the pagans practice are the names of spiritually negative forces, קליפות.

There is yet another way of approaching our verse, based on a kabbalistic approach. It is based on the principle that "sparks" of sanctity which have become exiled for one reason or another to one region or another, are not to be perceived as lost forever. Eventually, somehow they will find their way back to their holy origin. When the Torah speaks of the "name of the Israelite man," this is a hint that even after such a self-debasing encounter as he had indulged in with the Midianite woman the Torah still refers to Zimri as איש ישראל, "an Israelite man." This teaches that he had not been totally uprooted from his holy origin. The word המכה refers to what Pinchas had done to him. By adding the words את המדינית, "with the Midianite woman," the Torah indicates that rather than having been smitten with perdition of his soul he had only been smitten with losing his Midianite partner, i.e. that particular evil partner he had acquired. As a result of their physical union her characteristics had clung to his soul. This act of clinging to his soul is described by the term הכאה, a fatal blow. This teaches that by becoming Pinchas' victim Zimri's soul was released from the negative spiritual force his soul had absorbed from Kosbi. His death acted as his atonement, converted the damage into something transient rather than enduring. As soon as he and she parted company physically, Zimri's soul no longer bore the imprint of that fateful association.. His death purified his soul. This explains why the Torah could refer to him as "an Israelite man" only after he had been killed. If this approach is correct in terms of our השקפה, please accept this as my interpretation of this verse.

המדינית, The Midianite, etc. The reason the Torah describes Kosbi with the letter ה for a definitive article is proof that she must have been the only Midianite woman who sacrificed her self-respect in order to seduce an Israelite. This may also account for the fact that in 25,6 the word המדינית is written with the letter ה at the beginning although we had not heard of that woman previously. In fact, if the Midianite women had participated in mass seduction there can be no doubt that G'd would have commanded that they be killed during the punitive campaign against Midian. The Torah only reported the people as debasing themselves by sleeping with the Moabite women (25,1). There was a good reason why the Midianite women did not do what the Moabite women did. It was not that they were morally superior, but the Moabites had been given an assurance that the Israelites would not touch them. No such assurance had been given to the people of Midian. The reason that Kosbi was different was that she was Balak's daughter and as such had a personal interest to do what she could to help her father achieve the downfall of the Israelites.

I have found support for my theory in Tanchuma Mattot 4 where it is claimed that Tzur, one of the kings slain in the punitive expedition against Midian was Balak; he had been demoted because he had allowed his daughter to cheapen herself by sleeping with an Israelite. According to our theory that Kosbi was Balak's daughter this all makes sense seeing that there had been only a single Midianite woman who had been described as a seductress. It is more than likely that the one Midianite woman who had reason enough to do this was a daughter of Balak. She followed Bileam's wicked advice. It is possible that Kosbi was the very first woman to follow Bileam's advice and that the Moabite women were not willing to demean themselves until they had seen the king's daughter do this. It is quite true that I have written that Balak was demoted by the Moabites seeing that they had nothing to fear from the Israelites, Bileam having told them that any confrontation between them and Israel would occur far into the future. Nonetheless, Balak immediately followed Bileam's advice before he returned home to Midian. When the Moabites saw this they followed suit and slept with the Israelites. Were it not for this fact it is hard to understand why king Tzur's daughter should have been so different from all the other Midianite women.

I have found a Midrash in Yalkut Shimoni on Mattot in which the words הן הנה in Numbers 31,16 are translated as "these are the well known ones, etc." This means that Moses and Eleazar knew the women who had been taken captive so well that they were able to pinpoint which one of them had seduced which Israelite. If so, there must have been numerous Midianite women who participated in the seduction of the Israelites. We would then have to say that whereas all the Moabite women cheapened themselves, only the ordinary Midianite women participated in this wholesale seduction; the aristocrats amongst the Midianite women did not demean themselves in this fashion. Seeing that Balak was the only one who allowed his daughter to demean herself by sleeping with an Israelite, they demoted Balak as a punishment. If we follow this approach the letter ה at the beginning of the word המדינית means that she was the only aristocratic Midianite lady who had demeaned herself. According to the aforesaid there is proof for what we wrote at the end of Parshat Balak that the Israelites did not know these women as there were many Midianite women amongst the Moabites and they did not dress according to their local custom but tried to misrepresent themselves by wearing clothes belonging to the other nation. This was the reason the Torah in 25,1 mentioned the Israelites as fraternising only with the Moabites. They did not realise that Midianite women were masquerading as Moabites. Had they known this, the soldiers staging the punitive expedition would not have taken the women captive but would have killed them at once.

במדין הוא, her father was a head in Midian. This description is somewhat difficult. If the Torah meant to tell us that Tzur was the head of the whole nation of Midian it should have written ראש בית אב למדין instead of במדין. The prefix ב only tells us something about location not about stature and position. Why did the Torah have to tell us that Tzur lived in Midian? Where else would he live? Perhaps the intention is to counteract an impression created when the Torah described Balak as a king, whereas Tzur was described as head of a nation within Midian. The Torah wanted to tell us that Balak did not remain king of Moav but had already been expelled and had returned to his homeland by the time the Israelites were commanded to harass the Midianites. Moreover, the words במדין הוא may be a subtle hint that at the time that his daughter slept with Zimri, Balak had already returned to his home in Midian. Compare my commentary on 24,25.

צרור את המדינים, "harass the Midianites!" Why did the Torah write both: "harass, and smite them?" Our sages in Bamidbar Rabbah 21 were aware of this and said that although normally the Israelites are bound by the injunction in Deut. 20,10-19 to offer people whom they planned to attack peace, and offer them a chance to emigrate or surrender before actually attacking them, not to destroy their fruit-bearing trees, etc., in this instance these injunctions were lifted. The nation had shown itself to be so debased that no special consideration had to be shown to it. We must also understand what the Torah meant when speaking of "revenge" in 31,2 where the details about the punitive campaign are introduced. We would have expected the reverse, i.e. that the Israelites would consume the booty of their enemies as described in Deut. 20,14. Surely, this would have been more in the nature of revenge and the Midianites would have experienced more distress when they saw themselves losing all their possessions. Does not the Torah describe a people who has been cursed as being consumed by its enemies (Leviticus 26,16)?

Another difficulty is the justification offered by the Torah in verse 18: "for they have been harassing you, etc." Why did the Torah have to spell out the reason? According to those of our sages who stated that the injunction not to destroy the fruit-bearing trees had been lifted, the Torah felt compelled to justify this. According to Tanchuma the words כי צררים are to be understood as a reference to what the Midianites were about to do to the Israelites and the command to wage war against them first was an illustration of the halachic principle that if someone intends to kill you, don't wait, but kill him first. I believe this is a homiletical explanation.

I believe that the key to the correct interpretation of this episode is the fact that G'd gave the command to harass the Midianites not at the time it was to be implemented but sometime before it. The implementation was commanded only in 31,2. In other words the command we deal with in our verse does not address itself to the time of the act of revenge.

We must therefore assume that what G'd had in mind with this command was the rehabilitation of the Israelites. We have already written at length on Leviticus 18,3 that the urge to engage in illicit sex is a natural urge, difficult to combat especially when fantasy is supported by visual contact with the object of one's desire. It is extremely difficult to control one's fantasies. If someone has indulged his fantasy and has actually had forbidden sex, he cannot expect the atonement process to begin until he has rid himself of his desire, and has banished his fantasies. I have commented on this already in connection with Genesis 4,7 where the Torah told us that sin couches at the door and man displays a hankering after it. At the same time the Torah assured Cain that he could master these impulses. In the situation of which the Torah speaks, the Israelites who had not actually indulged in sex with the Moabites had certainly fantasized about doing so. Many of the elite even had become צמוד, attached, to Baal Pe-or as the Torah told us, i.e that they suffered from this powerful desire to commit the sin (compare 25,3). G'd intended to cure the Israelites of the pull exerted on them by this sin in order to remove the plague from them. We know from Deut. 4,3 that the plague did not come to an end until all the people who had worshiped the Baal Pe-or had died. It is quite clear that in that verse in Deuteronomy the Torah did not speak about the 24.000 who were reported as having died in Numbers 25,9. The 24.000 people mentioned there were all from the tribe of Shimon. According to Bamidbar Rabbah 20 [I have not found this. Ed.], these people died because they wanted to kill Pinchas. The text says that they were killed because they worshiped the Baal Pe-or. This proves that not only the 24.000 people mentioned in 25,9 died. Verse 18 in our chapter proves the same point when relating the pestilence to Baal Pe- or.

It seems dear that the principal issue that caused Pinchas to kill Zimri was not the fact that he had committed idol worship of the Baal-Pe-or, but his sleeping with a Midianite woman. Moreover, the plague occurred because of the people who indulged in sexual intercourse with the Moabites, and the Torah says that Pinchas atoned for the children of Israel, i.e. that his deed led to the arrest of the plague so that it did not kill the entire nation. Some of the people who were saved by Pinchas' deed had entertained idolatrous thoughts, others had engaged in illicit sex, something that G'd does not overlook. G'd now advised the Israelites to harass the Midianites, etc. The idea was to implant in the Israelites a hatred against the people who had caused them to commit their respective sins. They were also to develop a revulsion against anything that appeared good and permissible which these people had to offer to the Israelites such as the fruit of their orchards, etc. They had to realise that anything which originated with people such as the Midianites was disaster in disguise. Psalms 139,21 teaches us that David taught himself to hate people who hated G'd. The word משנאיך, "those who hate You," in that verse may be read as משניאיך, "those who cause You to be hated." People who cause us to hate G'd's statutes and who cause us to violate them are no different from people who tell us outright to hate G'd. Shabbat 114 elaborates on this theme. G'd's stratagem was to create within the Israelites a positive revulsion towards the thought of committing the sins which had caused the debacle at Shittim. Once the Israelites had trained themselves to hate sin, their affinity to G'd would become something natural and the process of atonement could commence.

This is basically what the word צרר in our verse is all about. The Israelites were to develop a feeling of צר ואויב against the Midianites. They were to perceive them as oppressors and enemies. As a result, they would develop feelings of hatred against them and anything which emanated from them. This is one path of repentance and it paved the way for ignoring the general injunction of not destroying the adversary's fruit-bearing trees or his water supply. The reason the Torah phrases this commandment in the present tense, tzaror instead of as an imperative tzeror! is to ensure that the feeling engendered amongst the Israelites towards the Midianites would be an ongoing one. The Torah goes on instructing "you shall smite them," i.e. in the future, not immediately. The Torah continues with כי צררים הם לכם, "for they continue to harass you," to make certain that the Israelites' hatred against the Midianites not be based on the casualties the Israelites had suffered already through the Midianites. If that were all, how could the campaign contribute to the rehabilitation of the sinners who were the victims and who had already died? The enmity had to be based on the ongoing machinations of the Midianites to entrap the Israelites into worshiping Baal Pe-or and in indulging in acts such as had been performed by Kosbi. The Israelites had to hate the cause of the sin not merely the sin itself. The reason the Torah singled out Kosbi was because she represented the additional allure of aristocracy plus the fact that she had engaged in her seduction publicly.

It is quite possible that the reason the Torah repeats the fact which we all know already namely that Kosbi was the daughter of the most important Prince of Midian, was to stress that when the Moabite women would observe their princess they would follow her lead in seducing the Israelites by demeaning themselves just as their princess had done. The Torah adds the nuance אחותם, "their sister," meaning that though they themselves were of Moabite origin whereas Kosbi was a Midianite, they considered her as their "sister" ideologically if not biologically. The Torah continues המכה, "who had been slain," to allude to her martyrdom for the cause. She had sacrificed her life for the advancement of the cause of the Moabites as if she had been a biological sister of the Moabites. ביום המגפה, on the day of the plague. This is a reference to the plague which occurred on account of the sin of Baal Pe-or. This teaches that the plague occurred immediately after the sin was committed; the plague was in addition to the 24.000 of whom the Torah reported that they died because they were all members of the tribe of Shimon on account of their threatening Pinchas. At any rate, the thrust of the whole paragraph is to instil the hatred against the Midianites based on purely moral grounds which alone could guarantee that the campaign against them would not only succeed but would not involve casualties by the Israelites.

ויהי אחרי המגפה It was after the plague had stopped, etc. Why was the beginning of this paragraph written as if it were the conclusion of the previous paragraph, with the dividing symbol פ separating it from chapter 26? If you reflect on what I have written previously you will find that this makes perfect sense. The position of our verse at the end of the previous paragraph reflects the Torah's instruction that only by complying with the command to harass the Midianites in the manner we have explained could the Israelites rehabilitate themselves for having entertained idolatrous thoughts, i.e. the worship of Baal Pe-or. Only then would their positive relationship towards G'd become a natural one. Once this had been accomplished, ויהי אחרי המגפה, they would have put the plague behind them. The true disappearance (instead of mere arrest) of the plague occurred as the result of penitence along the lines G'd had indicated. This is why the new paragraph had to begin in the middle of the verse, as it were. [In editions of the Bible based on the church's divisions into chapters and verses, our verse is part of chapter 26 instead of being verse 19 in the last chapter as it ought to be. In either event, the verse is interrupted by the symbol פ which always indicates that what follows has to be a new line in the Torah scroll. Ed.] You may still ask why the Torah did not make this line a verse by itself? The reason is that the Torah also wanted to link our verse to the subject which follows, i.e. that G'd had decided that the time had come to conduct a new census amongst the 12 tribes exclusive of the tribe of Levi whose members were not to share in the distribution of the land of Canaan.

Another reason why this verse is positioned so peculiarly and why it seems as if slashed in half, may have to do with a comment by Yalkut Shimoni item 773. The Midrash relates our verse to Psalms 94,18 in which Moses is the speaker. According to the Midrash, the nations of the world protested to G'd for having shown preference for the Jewish people by giving them the Torah. G'd countered asking that they produce proof that they were entitled to equal treatment on the basis of their ancestry. These nations were unable to establish the paternity of the men with whom their mothers had lived with any degree of certainty. As a result, G'd told them they had no claim to special treatment. Now that the Israelites had become guilty of "sleeping around," the nations challenged G'd once more about this, claiming Israel had lost its moral "crown." G'd therefore punished by death all the Israelites whose sins had undermined the image of the whole nation. The meaning of the verse in Psalms then may be that wiping out these people whose foot had slipped was an act of kindness by G'd for the remainder of the nation. In view of this, we can understand why our verse was positioned where it was and why it was also the natural introduction to the count of the Israelites. When the Israelites had been counted at the beginning of the Book of Numbers, we explained the term שאו for numbering as implying moral excellence on the part of the people being numbered. Only when the Israelites were counted again and everyone had been able to point to his father with certainty was the accusation by the Gentile nations that the Israelites were not morally superior disproved. The verse in Psalms mentioned by the author of Yalkut Shimoni means that though Israel had slipped morally, this was only temporary, i.e. מטה רגלי; now that they had repented, G'd's kindness had restored them to their former morally lofty position. The plague, which was related to their moral descent as per chapter 25, now enabled their moral rehabilitation as per the count in chapter 26. The verse therefore is the conceptual bridge between the two paragraphs.

Still another reason for the unusual positioning of this verse, or rather half this verse, may be related to Bamidbar Rabbah 21,7. We are told there that when the people left Egypt and they were entrusted to Moses' leadership, he received them after they had been counted. Now that Moses was close to death and he had to give back the people who had been entrusted to him, he also had to count them before handing them over to a new leader. Thus far the Midrash. Now we understand the meaning of the words ויאמר ה׳ אל משה …שאו. Had the Torah only commenced with verse 1 in chapter 26 instructing Moses to count the people without the half verse "it was after the plague" preceding it without a full stop, we would have assumed that the only reason for this count at this time was what the Midrash had said. By placing the words ויהי אחרי המגפה where it did, the Torah supplied an additional reason for the count, i.e. that it symbolised the rehabilitation of the Jewish people in the eyes of G'd.

וידבר משה..בערבות מואב, And Moses spoke…in the wilderness of Moav, etc. Why did the Torah have to write that Moses addressed the people "in the wilderness of Moav?" If the location really was of the essence to our understanding what Moses had to say it should have been mentioned when the commandment was introduced, i.e. in verse 1. The reason may be connected to the Midrash we have quoted that Moses had to hand over the people entrusted to him after they had been counted. You will find that whenever counts took place the location is mentioned by the Torah. When we heard about the number the Israelites comprised at the time of the Exodus, the Torah supplied the location, i.e. Ramses. When the Israelites were counted at the beginning of the Book of Numbers we were told that it was in the desert of Sinai. So it may be no more than natural that here too the Torah decided to supply the location for where the count took place. It was here, near the river Jordan opposite the town of Jericho that the loyal shepherd of the Jewish people, Moses, completed his mission. The Torah mentioned that it was after the plague to show that in spite of the plague which had cost so many Jewish lives the total number of Israelites had not shrunk but had considerably increased when we remember that at the first count the whole tribe of Levi had been included and the number given by the Torah was "approx 600.000." This was a testimony to Moses's leadership who could prove he had not lost any of his sheep. This then is the reason why the Torah did not write the location in verse 1. The location was not related to the count but to the fact that Moses used the count to complete his mission and "hand over his flock" to G'd or to a new leader.

You might argue that the introduction שאו את ראש suggests that G'd did order a census, quite independently of the considerations we have mentioned; the answer is that the words שאו ראש were not intended to demand a census. After all, even if it turned out that the number of the Israelites had shrunk considerably, who would attribute this to their leader? What comparison is there between a shepherd entrusted with sheep and a leader entrusted with people? We would answer that the count now represented the same idea as the one after the golden calf episode. We had been told at the time that when a pack of wolves have attacked a flock, the shepherd counts the remaining sheep to determine the amount of damage he sustained. When many Israelites had died as a result of the golden calf episode, G'd wanted to count how many had survived. In this instance too, many Israelites had died as the result of the debacle at Shittim so that a count to establish how many had remained alive was called for. Moses exploited this opportunity to do his "own thing," i.e. to demonstrate that he had not lost any of "the sheep" under his care. By mentioning the location in connection with what Moses said (verse 3) instead of in connection with what G'd said (verse 1) the Torah was able to make this point. Alternatively, Moses added verse 4 to show that the count was not his own idea but that he carried out G'd's instructions by conducting it.

מבן עשרים שנה ומעלה, from twenty years old and up, etc. Why doesn't the verse tell us the subject matter this number is relevant to as it had done in verse two? Did Moses expect the Israelites to guess the significance of this number? If that were to be assumed, why did the Torah trouble itself in verse two to provide the information that people fit for military service were to be counted? According to what I have explained on verse three that the number (census) and the location i.e. the wilderness of Moav, were interconnected seeing that the objective of the census was to demonstrate that the number of Israelites had not diminished during the years Moses had been in charge, even the younger members of the people ought to have been counted in order to establish Moses' claim. What good would it do the people if the numbers of men fit for military service had not decreased but the number of potential soldiers had decreased due to the families being smaller or mostly girls being bom? Perhaps someone really thought that all the Israelites were counted on this occasion in order to prove Moses' claim that the people were at least as numerous as when Moses had taken over. To prevent us from arriving at that conclusion, the Torah repeated that only males above the age of twenty were included in this census. The reason Moses did not count people younger than twenty was "as G'd had commanded Moses." Had the census been up to Moses' discretion alone, Moses would not have bothered to count the Israelites at all, neither the men of military age nor the ones younger or older. By writing the words: "as G'd commanded Moses," the Torah states that the entire census was G'd's idea. This being so, there was no reason to include any age category in such a census which had not been included in a previous census.

ובני ישראל היוצאים מארץ מצרים, and the children of Israel who took part in the Exodus from Egypt. It is quite unclear what the Torah intended with these words. Rabbi Avraham ibn Ezra suggests that the Torah meant that many of the people who were being counted now had actually taken part in the Exodus. Even if he is correct, why would the Torah consider it necessary to tell us about this at this point? Moreover, who needed Rabbi Ibn Ezra to tell us this? It is quite clear that many of the people who were below the age of twenty at the Exodus must have been included in this census! After all, the decree that the generation of the Exodus were to die in the desert after the debacle with the spies had applied only to people who had already reached the age of twenty either at the time of the Exodus or at the time the spies came back with their report! Perhaps it was the intention of the Torah to inform us that the result of this census produced a number equal to that of the census at the time the Israelites left Egypt as opposed to the number which resulted at the time the Israelites were counted at the beginning of the Book of Numbers. At that time the total amounted to 603,550 whereas this time the total was 601,730. In other words, the number was slightly lower than it had been some 38 years ago. The message then would be that Moses was not obligated to hand over to Joshua the same number of fighting men he had been able to muster at the time when he counted them earlier. The important thing was that he could show that he did not hand over fewer men than at the time of the Exodus. The census did prove this. [You will recall that I pointed out that the number at the Exodus included at least approx. 20.000 Levites so that Moses handed over far more men than he had at the time. Ed.] Another meaning of the words in question may be this: The number i.e. the census of Israelites on this occasion followed the same pattern as it had when they left Egypt, i.e. according to the houses of the respective tribal heads; Reuben according to the families of Chanoch, Phalu, Chetzron, and Carmi. Similarly, Shimon according to its tribal heads, i.e. Nemuel, Yamin, Yachin, Zerach and Shaul. This was in contrast to the count at the beginning of the Book of Numbers where the families of the tribes are not featured separately at all.