Phinehas the zealot

Monday, November 19, 2007: Psalm 65; Deuteronomy 1


We begin the last book of the Pentateuch, or the "Torah" proper (Torah is the word usually translated "law" but also the first five books in Jewish Bible). Moses will spend a few chapters rehearsing different parts of their history together. This book is very significant in the New Testament. All of Jesus' responses to the devil when he was tempted in the wilderness came from Deuteronomy (perhaps he had even been meditating on prior to the actual temptation - God seems to often equip us like this...).

I want to make a couple of brief comments re. Saturday's reading (we had a great time in Atlanta with our son Mark and his wife Monica; we went to a great concert by the stars of the movie 'Once' and to church at Trinity Vineyard which was awesome).

In Balaam's final oracle, this non-Israelite seer prophecies about Jesus:
"I see him, but not now;
I behold him, but not near;
a star shall come out of Jacob,
and a scepter shall rise out of Israel;
it shall crush the forehead of Moab..."
(Numbers 24:17)

This may have been what the magi from the East were referring to when they said "we have seen his star" in Matthew 2.

And also note the story about Phinehas in Numbers 25:6-13. Phinehas killed an Israelite man and a Midianite woman in the man's tent while they were engaged in the act...
And the LORD said to Moses, "Phinehas the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, has turned back my wrath from the people of Israel, in that he was jealous with my jealousy among them, so that I did not consume the people of Israel in my jealousy... he was jealous for his God and made atonement for the people of Israel."

The Zealots, whom we hear about in the New Testament as one of the sects of the Jews, found their identity in this story of Phinehas. The repeated word "jealous/jealousy" is also translated "zealous"... hence "zealot". He brought about atonement, averting God's wrath, through wielding a spear and shedding blood. The zealots of Jesus' day believed this was the answer as well to restoring the kingdom to Israel by overthrowing the pagan, idolatrous Romans by violence. Sadly, while their method had some brief success under the Maccabees before the time of Jesus (and I'm not sure if they actually identified themselves as zealots), they led the First (66-73 AD) and Second (132-135 AD) Revolts which were both crushed by the Romans and led to the destruction of the Temple in the First. After the Second no Jew was even permitted to enter the new city, called Aelia Capitolina, which had a temple built to Jupiter on the sight of the Temple (and which is why there was a Second Revolt).

Prior to the Second Revolt there had been five sects of Jews: the Saducees, the Essenes, the Zealots, the Pharisees, and the Nazarenes (or Christians). Afterward there were only the Pharisees and the Christians. The Pharisees reworked a rabbinic Judaism without the Temple and focused on the Scriptures, the synagogue and the home; and well, you know the gist of the what happened with the other group (but for a helpful look at the movement of the synagogue and the church away from each other see "Our Father Abraham" by Marvin Wilson).

May we be filled with the zeal of the LORD, not in the way of Phinehas however, but in the way of Jesus.