Pinchas – Torah with Joseph

Read the transcript below, or watch a video of the teaching by Joseph Shulam.

Shalom, my name is Joseph Shulam and together with Brad TV we are partnering to go through the whole five books of Moses, the whole Torah. Every week, we are talking about the portion of the week in Hebrews, the Parashah, that all the synagogues in the world study, read publicly in the synagogues on Saturday morning when they meet to worship.

So we are now arrived to a portion it’s called Pinchas. In English, they pronounce it Pinechas, but in Hebrew it’s Pinchas. And it’s one of my favorite portions in the whole book of Numbers. But in order to be able to get into it I need to do some background to this portion.

The previous portion was called Balak and it was the story of the king of Moab, Balak, that invited Bil’am- Bil’am, the sorcerer to come from Mesopotamia to Transjordan in order to curse the Israelites that are about to enter into his land, to pass through it, and to cross the Jordan to the land of Canaan. King of Moab Balak, understood three things that our enemies today haven’t understood yet.

One is, God is on the side of Israel and he will keep his promises to Israel. Sooner or later, even in our day, all the promises of God to Israel which includes the resurrection of the dry bones. We are already seeing it, but not all the way through. And the return of the Jewish people from all the world back to the land of Israel, and the settlement of the land, and the prosperity of the land, and subjugation of our enemies and peace with our enemies.

All these things that are promised in the scripture will happen and are happening actually already. But in the last portion, in the portion of Balak, where Balak invited Bil’am-- Balaam in English, who’s mentioned in the Bible several times even in the book of Revelation in chapter two, chapter three of the book of Revelation, Balaam is one of the arch villains of the- of the whole Bible, and Balaam is a strange character.

On the one hand, he has communication with the almighty God of Israel, And he’s obedient; when God says don’t do that, he doesn’t do it. He tells Balak I can’t do it. I have to do what God tells me to do, but he wants the gold and the silver that Balak promised him, so he gave advice to Balak. He said, you know, if you want to win over the Jews, over the Israelites, there’s only one men, send them beautiful women. Let the beautiful women of the Moabites entice the men of Israel. They’ll fall. They’ll sin. God will turn against them, and then you’ll be able to have victory over the Israelites.

Balak listens and he sends all the beautiful Moabite girls to entice the men of Israel and they succeed. In fact, the princess of the- the daughter of the king of Moab, of Balak himself. Her name is Cozbi, entices one of the presidents, the princes of Israel. The prince of the Tribe of Simeon, Zimri.

And in order to put their finger in the eyes of Israel they have open sex at the very entrance to the Tabernacle of God in front of everybody in the daytime. And Moses is then standing there and the Levites, And the priests and the elders of Israel are standing there and they’re watching, and Moses is ringing his hand. Well, what can I do? God!

A young man that was not appointed by the law took the law into his own hands. His name was Pinchas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron. He is a priest. I’m reading from Numbers 25:10 on- the portion stops in Numbers 29:40. The text from the prophet that was being read in conjunction is from first Kings 18:46-19:21 And from the new Testament, John 2:13 to the end of the chapter.

So, Pinchas sees that the leadership of Israel is impotent, doing nothing, wringing their hand and crying to God, And there is nothing happening. Cozbi and Zimri are having sex, and in front of the tabernacle of the Lord. So this Pinchas, takes his javelin, goes over there and he nails Zimri and Cozbi all the way through and the spear sticks in the land, in the ground, in the mud.

So Pinchas spears Cozbi, the princess of Moab and the president of the Tribe of Simeon, Zimri, through and through. Nails them dead to the ground.

Now what he did was against the law. He wasn’t the law. He was not authorized by anybody to take somebody else’s life. He was not appointed by Moses to do anything. He took the law in his own hands.

You would think today, if he did that in Israel, he would go to jail. We have soldiers that killed Arab terrorists that were endangering other soldiers after they already killed Israeli soldiers, and they were still endangering other soldiers, and when a soldier killed them without permission from his officer, he was put in jail, tried in trial, in court and put in jail.

Other country, when- when Arab kills Jews, he gets reward. Even if he dies, his family gets a pension for the rest of their life. Not in Israel today, but God sees what Pinchas did, and now we’re entering our portion. Chapter 25 of Numbers from verse 11: “Pinchas the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest, turned my anger-” That’s what God says. He drew back My anger at Israel and the leadership of Israel that showed such impotence.

But this young man Pinchas, didn’t show impotence, his zeal saved Israel, changed My mind. I was angry with the children of Israel because of their impotence, but Pinchas changed everything. He saved Israel from shame, from allowing a prince, a president of Israel, Zimri, the son of Palu, the head of the Tribe of Simeon to have sex with a Moabite princess at the entrance to the Tabernacle of God, where the the spirit of God hovers by day in the cloud and by night, the pillar of fire is there. In that place, to have public sex in defiance of Israel and defiance of God Himself, no.

Pinchas is not getting punished by God, He’s getting rewarded by God. Before Moses punishes him for breaking the law, from taking the law in his own hands, he gets blessed by God. God says in verse 12, I’m giving him a covenant of Shalom, a covenant of peace, to this young man. Instead of punishing him for taking the law into his own hands.

God says, I am giving him a special covenant of peace. And that will be for him a mighty power in his hand a covenant of priesthood that is eternal. Why? Because he had zeal and his zeal atoned for the sin, for the weakness, of Israel.

And our portion told us now in verse 14, the names of the people that Pinchas nailed to the ground with his spear. Zimri the son of Salu, president of the Tribe of Simeon and why- the woman that was killed by Pinchas, the Midianite princess, Cozbi, the daughter of Zur, the daughter of “rock”. Petra was the capital of Moab. Very interesting place to visit, even now.

And God now turns to Moses in verse 16. God tells Moses in verse 17. You need to command Israel to despise the Midianites, to attack them and to slay them. Now, the thing that I didn’t mention earlier, that the- that what happened is when- when all these women from Moab came to Israel and- and enticed the men of Israel, a plague, a plague hit Israel, and it’s called the plague of the deeds of Peor.

The debate amongst scholars, What does it mean the deeds of Peor? But Peor one of the gods of the Midianites and the way they worship that God is by having sex, open sex, public sex in the temples. We know that in the Roman time you had the Vestal Virgins in all the Roman cities and in all the places where the Roman legions went, those were temples of- of- of public prostitution.

Yeah? Vestal Virgins, they were called, they were everything except virgins that were- no actually I’m wrong, in the beginning, they all were virgins. But back to that- there, that’s not a new thing in the angel world, in the pagan world, you know, sex was considered a part of, not of family life only but a part of the way you express your dedication to your idols, to your gods, to the false gods.

This is, you know, one of these cases in which I think that we should- we should- we should dig a little bit deeper, you know because we are trained in Western civilization and only in Western civilization there is a law and no matter what, you don’t break the law.

But history is full of great heroic acts of people that took charge of the situation. even though they were not the ones that are responsible even though they’re not the ones that were appointed by law for the job, but when they saw the need, they took charge. We have a famous story of this dear brother and sister, in the gospels; the story of the Good Samaritan. The story of the Good Samaritan examined that.

The priest, the Levi that passed by and saw that- that- that Israelite, that Jew, beaten on the side of the road and bleeding they didn’t want to get their hands dirty. They didn’t want to become un- unclean and therefore not able to serve that day in the temple, but a Samaritan, that was- hated Jews, and was hated by Jews, saw the beaten person, he wasn’t in charge, he wasn’t responsible, he wasn’t expected, but he did it.

He got the person up, took him to the hotel, told the hotel that he will pay for all of his expensive until he gets well and was able to get out of there. He didn’t have to do it. It wasn’t his job. It wasn’t his place, but he did it, And- and Yeshua praised him for it and used him as an example.

And I saw an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, very, very famous rabbi a son of other, very, very famous rabbis, his father was the chief rabbi. When he was asked on television, what does it mean to be holy? The command in Leviticus 19:1-2, You should be holy because I, the Lord, am holy.

When they asked him, the interviewer asked him, Rabbi Benny, what does it mean to be holy? You know what he answered? To be like the Good Samaritan. The interviewer, Orthodox Jews tell you, you know that you’re quoting from Jesus? He said yes, for me, Jesus is a very important rabbi.

Yep. Things are developing here in Israel. But in our portion, this opening of- of the portion of Pinchas, named after this man, has got a great lesson. Sometimes you don’t have a choice. Sometimes you have to break the law, the law of the land, the law of what is appropriate or not appropriate in order to do the will of God.

And was a couple of days ago, Memorial day for the Holocaust; 6 million Jews that died. And, and we have the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem and there is thousands of Gentiles, many of them are Catholic priests and nuns who lied, who stole, who hid Jewish children in the monasteries, in the churches and saved their lives.

You have more than one general in Israel army, that was saved by Catholic priests, raised as a Catholic till he was 13 years old, and then the Catholic priest told him, listen you are a Jew. Return to your Jewish community.

We don’t want- there were like that- a priest like Daniel Rufeisen and Bruno Hussar and great men- Jews, that were raised in a Cath- and remain Catholics remained believers in Yeshua. And did great things, and great true Zionists for the state of Israel.

Yes, that happens even today, but the reaction of God to what was happening in Israel with the daughter, the women of- and with the advice that Bil’am gave to Balak to send the- the women, they- they’ll win over Israel. God commands Eleazar, the priest, and Moses to raise up an army from 20 years old, and up. Of those that got out of Egypt to count those from 20 years up and up to 50 and create an army for the first time in the history of Israel.

And they did. And they- they gathered them together and built an army in order to be able to cross the Jordan River and take the land that God gave Abraham, Isaac and Jacob by force, by war.

The first city was given to them as a gift, Jericho. But the rest of the cities they had to fight. They had to have an army. They have to ah, clear the land from idolatry, from paganism. They didn’t succeed so much in the first 200 years but later on, they did succeed and clear the land more or less, more- There’s always a stray idolater, even today in the land of Israel, even among the Messianic Jews, there’s sometimes things like that happen.

So we have the rest of the- the portion of the- the the week that we are reading of Pinchas is actually the census of the counting of how many men from each tribe between the age of 20 to 50 were kosher men, capable men to be soldiers, to be fighters. And that- that takes all of chapter 26, and we have the numbers, it’s a very interesting study within itself, but- but I want to inspire you folks.

So I want to go to- to chapter, to the- still within the portion of- of the- our reading of this week, and I want to go to chapter 27, verse one. There was a poor guy named Zelophehad, the son of Hepher, the son of Gilead, the son of Machir, from the Tribe of Manasseh, which is the Tribe of Joseph, one of Joseph’s son. And this man had only daughters Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah; five daughters.

But the poor, poor guy Mr. Zelophehad died, and he had no sons, And according to the law Moses was given to Israel in Mount Sinai, only the sons inherit. The girls marry somebody else, so they can’t inherit the land that God gave to the tribe because the land would go to another tribe, to another family, and so only the sons inherit.

But this, five daughters of Zelophehad, they come to Moses and they said, it’s not fair. Our father had no son, only daughters, poor guy. We want to inherit our father. Now, if Moses was like a normal person, a government official, or even a minister in the government, or even the prime minister of Israel, or the president of Israel, he would say the law is the law. The law says that girls don’t inherit, they don’t inherit, but Moses understood that there’s something unfair here.

So he turns to God and says, God, help me. What, what should I do? God says, you know what? I’m changing the law. Let the women inherit. Ah, I like that.

You have two things here in this portion called Pinchas, of changing the law, of going beyond the law for justice sake, God changed the law. He said, do you know what? These girls are right. It’s not fair for girls not to inherit. Let the girls inherit.

How beautiful that is, dear brothers and sisters. We’re talking about, you know egalitarianism. God, in his way, understood the problem. That the law was not answering a very fair and a very right question. And he says, let the daughters of Zelophehad Milcah and Tirzah and Mahlah and Noah and Milcah inherit.

There’s only one caveat to it, they must marry people from their own tribe so that the land doesn’t go to another tribe. Hallelujah, praise God. God understands us much better than we understand ourself. He is more gracious to us than we are gracious to each other, and hallelujah, praise the Lord. Amen.