From the Spear to a Covenant of Peace

This week we read Parashat Pinchas, Numbers 25:10 through 30:1, with Elijah at Horeb in the Haftarah from 1 Kings and the rider on the white horse in Revelation 19.

How does a man who drove a spear through two people walk away with God’s own covenant of peace? That is the knot this week’s teaching sits inside. Pinchas was jealous for the Lord, and in that single act he made atonement for a people who had handed themselves over to Baal of Peor, so God gave him what his Levite blood could never promise on its own, a lasting priesthood. A priest guards what is holy. He stands between God and the people, and Malachi says his very lips are meant to preserve knowledge. The teaching carries that charge out of the tent and sets it down on us, because everyone who bears God’s name now carries a share of that priestly weight. So what does it ask of you when the person in front of you believes nothing you believe, or wants to do you harm? Can you still speak truth and love over them, more concerned with what God thinks than with what they will think of you?