Jeremy Rosen
Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Numbers 25, Pinchas the Zealot

Jeremy Rosen | Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Numbers 25, Pinchas the Zealot | 05.15.24

Visuals displayed throughout the presentation.

- I now turn to the story of Pinchas. Pinchas was one of the priestly families, and he is the symbol of what we call “zealotry,” a kanai. Somebody who takes things so seriously that they are prepared to go beyond the law in pursuit of what they believe is the right thing to do. And this whole question of zealotry is a hugely problematic one because, essentially, Judaism is a tradition of you follow the law. You don’t go beyond the law. But there might be exceptions, and we are going to talk about an exception today. But an exception can’t be the rule. And one of the problems we’ve always had at every stage in our history have been… There’ve been zealots who want to do things their way and no other way. So that’s what we’re going to explore, at least to begin today, with chapter 25 of… Chapter 25 of Numbers. So when we last left it last week, Balaam has failed to do the cursing that he was employed and brought to perform. And as a result, Balak, the king who brought him, is hugely furious with him.

It says, the last sentence of the previous chapter, “Balaam gets up, "he goes back home, "and Balak goes on his way.” And that’s where it ends. Now, chapter 25. “And after these events, "Israel is dwelling in an area called Shittim.” “And the people began…” It’s interesting how the English says “the menfolk,” but it’s , “the people”, “to be seduced, "to prostitute themselves, "to the Banot Moav, "to the daughters of Moav.” “And these women seduced them "and got them to sacrifice "to their gods.” “They… "People ate of the sacrifices "that they offered them together "as part of the worship.” “And they started worshipping their gods.” Now, this is an amazing situation. Here, you’ve had the children of Israel winning two major battles against local pagans and now, all of a sudden, they are falling to the seduction of the Moabite women. There is no evidence to support this at the moment, but the tradition is that Balaam, just before he left, gave a little piece of advice. And in effect, if you go back to a few lines before the end of the previous chapter, he says to Balak, “I will give you advice,” but then he specifically refers to Amalek and certain other nations.

So the rabbinic idea is this was Balaam’s idea. He says “The weak spot of the Jewish people is "they can so easily be seduced.” And as we’ve mentioned before, the pagan world at that time was very attractive on a purely physical level because there was temple prostitution, people were encouraged to go and to give their bodies to their god, Baal-peor. And obviously, this looks very attractive, particularly in view of the fact that they are now having banquets with lots of meat and drink and wine, and everybody’s having a wonderful time. And so, here we are almost 40 years after the golden calf episode, and the people are still doing the same sort of thing. Of course, the question is how many of the people are, and we’re going to come to that. So this is a situation which now exists. The Jews are being seduced. And in fact, there is a Talmudic opinion which says that Jewish men are quite susceptible to being seduced. I don’t know how true that is, I don’t have any statistics on it, but that’s an interesting comment at a time, remember, when many, many Jews were being seduced by both Greece and by Rome, and by that very free sexual world that Rome represented.

So it says in verse three, “And Israel attached itself to Baal-peor, this god of Peor, either defecation or sexual ejaculation. "And God was furious "with the Jewish people, "with the Israelites.” Now, the question is what happens then? So what happens then is verse four, “I want you to gather together "all the heads of the people,” “and place them before God,” “in front of the sun.” “And the anger of God towards Israel will be assuaged. "He will not be angry anymore.‘ So this looks like the order comes from God to deal with the situation. Now, the question is what exactly is He telling them? Because if you look in verse four, God says to Moses, "Take all the people,” , and this is a word which mean literally to stick them down, or to place them, but the translation usually is to impale them, which is very strange 'cause impaling… Vlad the Impaler of the stories that come from Romania about horrible, horrible guys that are the basis of all these stories that come out of Romania about drinking the blood of individuals, this looks a bit like that. That you are actually impaling them. And the question is, “Who are you impaling?”

Because if it says , “All the heads of the people,” why only them? Surely it should be the people who are misbehaving. And that’s why the English, again, talks about the ringleaders, but it doesn’t say ringleaders. It says , “The heads of the people.” Now, normally, means the elders. Now, you can’t, in Jewish law, punish somebody for actions that other people are doing. That completely betrays Jewish law. And yet, if this is what is being said, that these are the heads of the people, not the ringleaders, then that’s a problem. So there’s problem number one. Then, in verse five, Moses clarifies what that is meant. And he says “To the judges of the people,” and these are, if you like, the policemen, they say, “I just want you to kill "those people who have betrayed us, "who have betrayed God, "and are worshipping "and have now identified with Baal-peor,” with this pagan god. The Bible does not hold back from saying how awful we are and what terrible mistakes we keep on making. But before that can be carried out, it seems there is a rebellion against Moses of these people who have joined Midian. V'hinei, verse six. “One of the Israelite men,” “brought his Midianite woman "up to them in defiance.” “In front of Moses "and the community of Israel,” “standing in front of of the tabernacle.”

And they are crying at what this guy has done. And it’s clear that what he is doing is not just presenting them, but he is actually defying Moses by sleeping with her, by having sex with her, in public. How do I know this? You are going to see in a minute. Verse seven. “And Pinchas, the son of Eleazar, "the son of Aaron,” . So he is a great nephew of Moses. “And he emerges from the community "who are watching all this.” “And he takes a spear in his hand.” “And he comes after… "He comes after the man of Israel” And the question is, “What is ?” Is it a chamber where they both are? But they’re not in the chamber, they’re in public, outside. “He attacks him in the stomach.” So he’s lying his stomach on her stomach, and he spears both of them together. With a , the man of Israel and the woman of Israel, , and to the stomach. And all of a sudden, the plague, which is broken out, , stops. in this plague, the people number of died was 24,000. So it’s 24,000, which is a relatively small number if we’re talking about 600,000, and then only. So only a small proportion, and similarly with the golden calf, it was only a small proportion who actually were involved in this pagan worship, in going over to the Midianite religion, of abandoning the Jewish religion and creating this massive crisis.

So once again, we learn it’s a small number. It only takes a small number of people, a small number of rotten apples, so to speak, to destroy the whole nation and the whole situation. So what has Pinchas has done? He has taken the initiative in the face of Moses and Aaron. They’re the leaders, he’s not the leader. What right did he have to take this action? This is an example of zealotry, of somebody saying, “I don’t care what the law says. "The law says there’s got to be due process, "I don’t care, "or God takes care of it, "I’m going to deal with this ”'cause it’s so important.“ And how could he do this in front of Moses and Aaron? Except as we’ve already heard, Moses and Aaron are standing there, dumbfounded. They’re crying. They feel so distraught, so desperate at what’s happening at this public betrayal, that they can’t act. It’s almost as though they have been, if you like, stymied, and require somebody else to deal with the situation 'cause they can’t. The question then is, was Pinchas right or was he wrong? The rabbis of the Talmud, and that commentary, say very clearly that they were furious with Pinchas.

They objected to him taking the law into his own hands. And besides, as we are going to learn in due course, this guy who he killed is an absolute aristocrat. And if you are familiar with the Hammurabi code and the earlier codes of law that were common in the Assyrian world, at that Mesopotamian world, at that time, you know that somebody of a lower rank is not allowed to kill somebody of a higher rank. That’s forbidden under any conditions. And there’s a bigger penalty for somebody who is of a lower rank, even though he’s of the tribe of the Levites, or the Cohens, Kohanim so to speak. And so, this is the reason why the rabbis want to assert that what Pinchas did was beyond the law, and it is not something that , as general rule, we approve of. But now comes the reaction of God at the beginning of chapter 20… Oh, of verse 10 of chapter 25. And so, there in chapter 10, God speaks to Moses and he says, Pinchas verse 11. "He has pulled me back from expressing "my anger towards the children of Israel,” “When he was zealous on my behalf "in dealing with them.” “And therefore, I was passionately angry "with the children of Israel "and I would otherwise have destroyed them, "but he did it for me.” “Therefore,” “I want you to say,” “I grant him a pact of peace.”

Now, we’ll come to that in a minute but first of all, what happened to the 25 who were killed in the plague? Wasn’t that God exercising his anger? Does this mean God planned to exercise greater anger against everybody else? Or is the sequence… And this often happens in the Torah, the sequence is not necessarily consecutive, it doesn’t happen in the way that we like to see things happen. Early things first, things later, very often they’re jumbled up. And we’ve dealt with this in the famous debate as to whether the tabernacle was built, planned, before the golden calf, or afterwards, in reaction to it. And the fact that you can have two different points of view raises the question, the Torah says very clearly that the tabernacle was planned beforehand and then the rebellion came afterwards. What is a covenant of peace? Now, one hand, we can understand this as saying that although he himself has, if you like, been warlike, he did it in the interests of the greater peace for the greater number. So you could say that this covenant is a covenant of recognition of his doing the right thing for the sake of the total community.

But it could also mean this: According to Jewish law, a priest, no matter how bad he is, whatever mistakes he might have made, can still… Almost, not quite, but can still perform the function of a priest. But if a priest has killed somebody, that automatically bars him from the priesthood. The priesthood has to be the symbol of peace, which is another reason why, for example, the altar could not have cut stone, anything that involved metal, in its structure because metal was a symbol of war. So what God is saying is normally, he’d have to be banned from the priesthood but because of what he’s done, because he did it for God, not for himself or for any other reason, I’m saying he can remain a priest. And not only could he remain the priest, his family will too. And therefore, in verse 13, it says, “And therefore to him, "and the children that come after him,” “There will be a covenant "of the priesthood forever.” Well, I thought we fixed this before, but obviously not. Obviously, remember, when Aaron died, his two sons, they replaced him. But maybe it wasn’t going to be after those two sons. But either way, Pinchas now is the future of the priesthood because he was zealous, he was passionate for God, and he atoned, for the children of Israel.

So in a sense, God is saying all of Israel, in a sense, bears some blame for this, which is an interesting point of view. Although it was only some people who got involved in this corruption in becoming pagans, in pursuing the Midianites’ sexual way of life, nevertheless it seems that the whole of the nation needs to atone. And that’s also one of the principles, that we are responsible for other people in our nation. And if members in our nation do wrong, in one sense we share a degree of if not actual legal responsibility, at least moral responsibility. Could we not have done more? And that is something that any sensitive teacher or rabbi will always have at the back of his or her mind. “Have I done enough? "Could I have done more?” But anyway, here, this is where God gives a conclusion, and the postscript comes in verse 14. “And who was the man? "Who was the man who did this?” “Who was slained… "Slain, killed.” “Who was killed with the Midianit.” Interesting word here because this word , if you look in verse 14, the shame in the name, the Israelite man, who was killed .

Now, normally means “with.” It could also mean “in fact he did kill the Midianit.” Maybe he was responsible for the killing of the Midianit. But either way… it was by bringing her in and publicly displaying her. So the name of this guy is Zimri ben Salu, which is why Zimri is not a very common Jewish name. Zimri ben Salu. He was , he was a prince, of the tribe of Shimon. That is very interesting. Because if you remember, Shimon and Levi were the two brothers. They were the two brothers who went into Shechem after they raped and imprisoned their sister, Dinah, and killed all the men and took everything out of the city. And at the end of that, Jacob says, on his dying deathbed, “Levi and Shimon are men of violence. "I need to separate them.” And so the tradition goes that the Levites’ violence, if you like, was channelled into this zealotry, and Shimon went off in a different direction, and in fact was left out of one of the sets of blessings. So it’s interesting that this guy, Zimri, is a descendant of Shimon. Shimon is associated with aggression, but so are the Levites associated with aggression. The Talmud has lots of interesting stories about how aggressive the priests were.

One most famous one is that two priests were running up the ramp in order to perform the sacrifice, and one pushed the other off the ramp, killing him, in the hope of he getting there first. Another is that there were these groups of young priests called the Pirchei Kehuna, the flourishing… The little , the up-and-coming priests, who would go round in gangs beating up priests who didn’t behave. This was the God squad marching around that the Talmud mentions. It’s not happy about it but it does say there can be occasions where it may be necessary to go beyond the law in order to impose discipline. So that is a highly contentious point of view, and it’s a point of view that continues to be debated. And certainly, after the temple ended and the role of the priesthood ended, I think almost everybody agrees that there is no room for extrajudicial punishment, taking the law into your own hands. And I wish people on the West Bank who do act, the hilltop and other extremists, ought to bear this in mind. But unfortunately, as we know in Judaism, we always select what we want to select and we leave out what we don’t want to keep.

So that’s what happened to Zimri. Whoopsie. My phone has zoomed out. I’ve got… Can’t even see what I’m saying here. Okay. No, I can’t. I need to reduce the size of my screen because it has got much too big and I don’t know why it’s got too big. View. Zoom out. View. Zoom out. It’s still not coming where I want so I’m just going to… Ah, there we are. Thank you. Miracle. I dunno how that happened but it happened. Okay, now I need to zoom back again, otherwise you’ll be too small. So Zoom In and View, and Zoom In. Ah, well, I hope that’s better, and you can see where we are. So verse 15. Numbers 25, verse 15. “We’ve mentioned the man, "who was the woman?” “The woman who was killed was a Midianit, "a Midianite woman. "Her name was Cozbi bat Zur.” Her name was Cozbi. Nice name, Cozbi. She was the daughter of a person called Zur, which is a Hebrew word actually. It means a rock. And Cozbi comes from the word , “to lie,” so she’s a deceiver. So she’s not the perfect person you might think. And these are . This is a tribal head. He’s one of the top guys of Midian. So the top guys of Midian are sending out their daughters to seduce the Jews. And so, this represents now a massive threat. And we come to a part of the Torah that I find very difficult to cope with.

But given the mores and the situation of the time, one has to see it against a background of thousands of years, and against the background of this past year, in which the most horrible form of violence is carried out against one’s enemies thousands of years later when we thought people were going to be civilised. So in verse 16 of 25, God says to Moses, “You’ve got to attack the Midianites,” “and you’ve got to smite them or destroy them.” “They are a particular danger to you” “for the deceptive way "that they deceived you, "and they were able to trick you "into worshipping their gods, "and worshipping Baal-peor.” As an example, what Cozbi, one of the princes of the tribe of Shimon and the people with them, what they did by worshipping Baal-peor both physically and, if you like, spiritually. And those were the people that were killed but there’s a wider problem. Verse 26. So there’s been a command to destroy and this command to destroy them, I don’t like it but it’s part of history and we’ve come some way since then. You could argue of course that Midian didn’t actually attack them physically. But on the other hand you could argue that this undermining of that whole religious way of life and their whole value system, and that was the purpose of their coming out of Egypt, to establish a new system, that this was a serious challenge, existential challenge, to Judaism.

And so, verse 26, “We need a restructuring.” Verse one, “After the plague,” “God says to Moses and Eleazar ben Aaron Ha-Kohen,” Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest, who’s now the top guy, “We now want to take a census.” “Another?” “See who’s left, who’s around. "From 20 years older and upwards, anybody,” “Anybody who is fit to fight for Israel.” So now we are getting ready for the invasion. We are getting ready and we want to know who the leaders are and who is going to fight. So we’re only dealing with those people 20 years upwards who are going to fight. Interesting that in Israel nowadays, 18, not 25… Or 20. So in verse three, Moshe speaks to Eleazar, the priest, in the places of Moav, , leading towards Jericho at the other side of the river. “I want you to organise this, "20 years upwards, "as God has commanded, "the children of Israel "who came out of Egypt.” So who are we going to… What are we going to do? We are going to start appointing new leaders. New leaders to take the measure of who is going to fight, organise the army and lead everybody. So the first is Reuven. Reuven, the first born. And it’s going to be Hanoch, from the family of Hanochi. And Fallu from the half family of Fallu.

So we’ve got two guys. Then you’ve got Hezron, . And then you’ve got these other serious people. So it looks like this is not just the single leader, but this is the team. And And they… They gather everybody together and count the numbers of people ready to fight. And they come to the conclusion, in verse seven, that they are 43,730. So that’s how many people they’ve got ready to fight. Now, notice it’s an even number. What are the chances of even numbers? Well, I’m not a mathematician so I’ll leave that to you to calculate, but you are going to see that all the numbers here are even numbers. There isn’t going to be even one that isn’t an even number. Anyway, we’re carrying on. Verse nine, “The sons of Eliav, were Nemuel, "Dathan Abiran.” Dathan and Abiran were the two people who in fact got involved in the rebellion of Korach against Moses, and they disappeared, because they agitated the people against Moses and Aaron with Korach’s rebellion, when they provoked God. And if you remember, what happened was “And the Earth opened up,” “And consume them and Korach.” And Korach, amongst those who died. And then there were the fires that came after that also ate up 250 people, and they became a miracle but it’s also a symbol of what happens. But hold on, look what they say here. “But the sons of Korach did not die.”

But I thought we said last time that Korach and his family, and all of them, went down into the earth. And now, all of a sudden, you are changing your mind and you are saying the sons of Korach did not die. Isn’t this a contradiction between the two? And again, the rabbis have a big problem with this. One of them is to say, as they say before, the sons of Korach actually did not identify with their father. They withdrew. Another is that, in fact, they didn’t go all the way down. They only went halfway down and were able to come back out again. But basically, this, again, looks like an important principle, that you don’t punish children for what their parents do. But either way, this is a very important distinction that most people go through the Torah and they don’t even… Doesn’t even to register them that having said, at one moment, all the family went down, now we say the sons of Korach did not die. So then we are looking at the next lots of serious people for each tribe and who are going to lead this campaign. Shimon’s family, Nemuel, from the Nemuelis in verse 12, Jamin, from the Jaminis, and Jachin from the Jachinis.

And in addition, There is Zerah from his family and Saul from his family. Don’t confuse this Saul with the later king. “And these make up the important families "of the Shimonites, "and they are numbered at 220, or 22,200.” But again, it’s an even number. And once again, we ask the question, is this the total number of the population or is it only the population of those… The numbers of those who are going to fight? And you tot up at the end and see if we come to 600,000. And then the sons of Gad. They were from the family of Zephun, from the family of Zephunis, we’re in verse 15, . Interesting names, all these names. They sound like Hebrew, and they are Hebrew names, but we don’t know if they were borrowed in some way from some other background. Because, if you remember, Esau married somebody who was called Yehudith, who sounds like a Jewess, but she was from the Canaanites. Sorry, from Ishmael. No sorry, sorry. Yehudith was a Hittite, so she wasn’t Jewish. Anyway, verse 16. There’s Ozni, from the family of Oznis, and Eri, from family .

There’s Arod from the family of Arodi, and Areli from the family of the Areli. And there was a family of Bene Gad, the sons of Gad, according to their numbers. And it’s interesting, why do you only mention the sons of Gad and you don’t mention who they were? And they were 40,500. So this is another anomaly. Why are they missing? Now, we know that Gad is going to be one of the tribes, together with Reuven, who decided in the end to stay on the East Bank of the river Jordan and not come into the land of Canaan. But they did that together with Reuven. And Reuben is… Have all his family mentioned, so that doesn’t make sense there. And then, we’re also mentioning the sons of Judah. Is Er and Onan. And Er and Onan were the two guys who died, the sons of Judah in Canaan, because they wouldn’t perpetuate the family and misbehaved. And why are we mentioning them? Why are they here? They’re dead. They have no descendants and yet they are mentioned. The only case here of mentioning something from the past that has no bearing on the present, as if to reiterate the fact that there’s a sexual element in this campaign against Midian.

The Midianites. Verse 20, the sons of Judah, the Shelah, the last son, Perez, and the twins. And Zerah… Sorry, Perez and Zerah. And Shelah was the last son of Reuven. Perez and Zerah were the grandchildren. And then in verse 29, the sons of Perez, of Hezron and Hamul, and then the… That was a family of Judah and they were 7,600 and 500 together. Again, all perfectly even numbers. And then, you have the sons of Issachar. There’s Tola and Puvah. And it’s very interesting. If you look at that verse in 23, you have the sons of Issachar, , according to their families, are Tola, and Puvah, which should be from the . It should be Puvahi, not Puni. But of course, this is an interesting example of the unusualness of a language and a grammar where there are exceptions. As there are in almost every language and every form of writing, there are exceptions to the rule. But Puni is his family name. And then, there’s Jashub from Jashubi, Shimron from Shimri. There’s Issachar, from… And that comes to their number of 64,300. And then, Bene Zebulun, family of Zebulun. There’s Sered, Seredil Elon, Eloni; Jahleel, Jahleeli. And these are the families of Zebulun.

They come to 60,500. And then there’s the sons of Joseph. There’s Manasseh and Ephraim, they divide into two tribes. Manassee’s Machir, Machiri. And he gave birth to Gilead. . And it’s interesting specifying giving birth to Gilead because Gilead is also going to be a very, very important place and it’s going to recur many times after the crossing over the river Jordan. So they are unique. And these are the sons of Gilead. There’s Iezer, Iezeri, and , and Asriel, Asrieli, and Shechem, . That’s the same name of that town which was a non-Jewish town, which Shimon and Levi destroyed, so they borrowed the name. So therefore, it’s a question, how many other names were borrowed from earlier names? Then Shemida from the family of Shemidai, and Hepher from Hepheri. And then, there’s 33, a very important family that’s going to recur. There’s Zelophehad ben Hepher. Zelophehad ben Hepher . He had no sons, , only daughters. And these daughters were called Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, Tirzah.

So these were all daughters of Zelophehad, and they are women and they are given names. These are the only women names that are used here. And we’re going to come to them because they are going to feature in the first example of women’s rights in the Torah. We will follow in the next week or so. And they were all from the family of Manasseh. and they came to 52,700. And then there was Ephraim, the other son of Joseph, and in verse 35. And then there’s Eran , and these were the families of Ephraim. All the numbers, 32,000. And you notice how some tribes are much bigger than other tribes of… On the other hand, in the case of Manasseh and Ephraim, in a sense they should be merged. And then you come to Benjamin. And Benjamin’s sons were Bela of Belahi, Ashbel of Ashbeli, Ahiram of Ahirami, . And then, the sons of Bela were Ard Naaman, . These are the members of the tribe of Benjamin. According to their family, they are 45,600.

And then we come to Dan. Dan is one of the biggest tribes, the one that goes up in the north. These are the sons of Dan, But if they were so big, how come there’s only one family there? That’s also strange. All the others who have relatively smaller numbers have lots of sons, and Dan only has one. It’s another interesting anomaly for which there is no obvious explanation. And then, we come to Asher and he had his family. Imnah Mini. Ishvi Ishvi. Beriah Beri. And the sons of Beriah were Heber of Heberi, and Malchiel Malchieli. And here’s the other woman. The only other woman mentioned here is Serah, the daughter of Asher. What’s unique about Serah? We are told nothing else about Serah, other than she was mentioned before when the family go down to Egypt. Serah bat Asher. And once again, she is mentioned here.

What is so remarkable? And again, there are all kinds of stories about Serah that we’ve mentioned in the past. One of them was she was ex… Had extensive longevity. She went down to Egypt for 400 years. She was in Egypt before they came out, or a little less than that. And when they were coming out Egypt, they had to bring with them the body of Joseph, who had died, but nobody knew where the body was. Serah bat Asher was able to notify exactly where his coffin was in the Nile, and brought it out of the Nile so they could take it to the land of Egypt. Serah also, interestingly enough, has an important place in the Persian tradition.

Because according to the Persian tradition, when the Jews were exiled by Nebuchadnezzar and sent all the way back to Babylon, she was able to discover an underground secret tunnel leading from Jerusalem to Babylon so that the Jews could walk without having to die in the desert on the way. Underground, under heat, and get there safely. But again, why she is the only one mentioned? It’s very difficult to tell. And therefore, one can only assume that, like the daughters of Zelophehad, she played a very important part and we don’t know exactly what that part was that she played. And in verse 51, these are the numbers of the children of Israel, 600,730. So 601,730. So again, you know that numbers are not always meant to be taken purely literally. First of all, we kept on talking about 600,000, not 601,700. And secondly, all even numbers. That can’t make sense. So this is where we will end for today and let’s have a look at the questions. Oh, I can’t see the questions anywhere. Open, there we are. Good. So…

Q&A and Comments

Q: “How are the Israelites,” Shelly asked, “able to eat meat of the Moabites "with the kosher laws?” A: That’s a brilliant question, and there are two simple answers. Remember, the guys who are eating their sacrifices have abandoned Judaism, so they’re not religious anymore. Not in that way. They’ve become Midianites. That is obviously a serious issue. But nevertheless, that’s a very good question.

Hold on, why can’t I find my other questions? My other questions have disappeared. I can’t find my questions. Where have my questions gone? Oh, here we are.

Q: “What constitutes worshipping Baal-peor, "just sleeping with a Midianite woman?” A: No, there were several… Lots of rites of Baal-peor, which included having sex at the temple. It also included defecation in public. It had a whole list of other customs, as all religions did. And so, these are the two main ones that we are dealing with, the physical degradation which makes Midian particularly problematic. Then let’s go on to Israel.

Q: “Does it seem that Pinchas’s action, "and becoming judge and passing judgement and punishment, "seem to be too extreme? "Where are the 13 qualities of God "that we seek to emulate coming into play?” A: Well I think, Israel, we are dealing with exceptional circumstances. It’s all very well. I mean, we talk about peace but on the other hand, we don’t want to go to war but we have to go to war, and that’s an exceptional situation. And the Torah recognises that it is exceptional. And therefore, it is something that we have to consider is not the norm. But you’re right in theory. But back to the whole question of why do you assume that when we talk about God’s qualities, we mean God is a human being? God is in a different zone. Although there may be overlap and interconnection, it’s not relevant to talk about God as though God was human.

Q: Susan asks, “If Minchas is the grandson of Aaron, "why was he not a priest?” A: No, the question is within the families of Moses and Aaron, and their whole families, who were all Levites, they weren’t all given the job of being high priests or, at any rate, being in the senior position. So this was a more senior position within the priesthood that he was given.

Baron, “Interestingly now, "we’re counting the "with an emphasis on the 24,000 students "of Rabbi Akiva who died "during the timeframe. ‘And here, in the past, "you’re also talking about 24,000 died "before the plague ended.” Barry, that’s an excellent point and I think very often you find that numbers that signify something in one era are then borrowed in another era. Just think for example of the 40 days and 40 nights, Moses on the mountain, and then we go to 400 years in the desert, and then we go to King David reigns for 40 years, Solomon, 40 years. We have 40 as being constantly recurring. And so, 24,000 is a recurring number, as you rightly say, and thank you for reminding us of that, and I think it’s, again, a round figure, as these figures in the census that we’ve been talking about are probably round figures.

Q: “Did King Solomon not do the same "when he married an Egyptian princess "and allowed idol worship? "And there are also midrashim that he did too. "What was his punishment then?” A: Well, first of all, the midrash does have different points of view, but Solomon himself was always following the Torah. He was always following the Torah in terms of abiding by Jewish law. As far as the Torah is concerned, there’s no mention of whether he worshipped idols. It’s only mentioned that he allowed the women, the queens, to have idols, and it was considered that he did the wrong thing. And the punishment that the Talmud says that he did for betraying the religious values in the community was that the country, after his death, would be split into two, that he was no longer… His family would no longer have total control over the Jewish people. There’d be two nations after his death. So that’s what the punishment was that he got.

Q: Israel, “What about the letter "in the word "shalom,” “often a broken letter "in the Torah, "does it indicate shalom cannot be created "by such acts of murder?” A: Well that’s a very nice idea, Israel, but remember, if you take the out, you have the word, shalam, which means “complete.” And so it’s very possible that there was a disagreement early on in the writing of the Torah as to which was the right one, “shalom” or “shalam.” But either way, it’s certainly felt that if you use violence, however necessary it is, in a way it degrades you, in a way you go over a certain line. It almost makes killing sometimes seem not such a terrible thing. And therefore, you have to have safeguards. And this is a safeguard, that, normally, you mustn’t go beyond the law, but there might be exceptions, in the same way that there might be exceptions to have to go to war in self-defense. But that doesn’t mean that one cannot hope for peace, and one should always have peace at the head of one’s mind.

Q: “Is Perez the same Perez "who King David was a descendant of?” A: Yes, that’s the same one. He was a grandson of Judah and he was the great-grandfather of King David.

Q: Janice, “Is the reason there was no iron "in Solomon’s temple "the same reason no iron the tabernacle?” A: Yes, absolutely true. And that’s where the nice myth of the shamir, this little creature that could cut stone instead of using metal to do it.

“I hope you are feeling well. "Thank you very much "for the interesting .” Thank you, Carla, and I’m glad to hear that you’re well.

Anyway, thank you, and I will see you next week.