Nehar Deah

Pinchas

The Four Covenants

Towards the end of their wanderings on the way to the Land of Canaan, the children of Israel are enticed by the daughters of Midian, they stay with them and worship their god, Baal-Peor (Bamidbar 25:1-3). This ritual orgy arouses God’s ire and He brings a plague on Israel and threatens to wipe out the nation (Pesachim 8-9). Pinchas son of Eliezer the priest is zealous for God and before Moses and Israel he attacks with his spear “Zimri son of Salu, prince of the House of Shimoni” and the Midianite woman that was with him, Cozbi daughter of Zur, head of the people of a clan in Midian, and brings to an end the plague (verses 7-8, 14, 15). Due to his zealousness for God and his action that resulted from his own instincts and not from a heavenly command, God rewards him with “the priestly covenant for all eternity” - “to him and his descendants thereafter” (verse 13).

This covenant that God makes with the Priestly caste stands at the highpoint of a series of four covenants in the Torah which are mostly similar in terms of content and structure. The first of these covenants is made with Noah and his sons, with the renewing humanity after the flood (Bereishit 9:8-17). The second covenant God makes with Abraham between the birth of Ishmael and the birth of Isaac, with the change of his name from “Abram” to “Abraham” and the promise that he will be “father of many nations” (Bereishit 17:1-14). The third covenant, the covenant of the Sabbath and its observance, was made with the children of Israel when Moses stood on Mount Sinai, before he received the tablets of the testimony (Shemot 31:12-17). The fourth covenant is that which is mentioned above, an eternal covenant of priesthood for Pinchas and his descendants.

It is clearly noticeable that the four covenants described by the Torah are made with groups of decreasing size: the entire humanity; all the descendants of Abraham; the children of Israel and finally the priestly caste. The four concentric circles, one within the other, represent a progressive process of selection. As the circle we are studying gets smaller, so the level of closeness to God of the human group it represents grows. The system of covenants concludes with the priesthood which testifies to the trend of the whole series and points to the basis of this tradition among circles within the priesthood.

The four covenants are eternal covenants that cannot be broken. God promises Noah and his sons that he will never again bring a flood to the whole world and he accompanies this promise by giving a sign: “which I give between me and you and between every living creature that is with you for all generations” (Bereishit 9:12). Also the covenant with Abraham is “for your generations an eternal covenant to be for you a God and to your descendants after you” (ibid 17:7). The covenant of the Sabbath which is given to the children of Israel requires that it be observed for all eternity: “And the children of Israel observed the Sabbath, to keep the Sabbath for all generations, an eternal covenant” (Shemot 31:16 [and this verse is found in “Kiddush Rabba” [The Great Sanctification ritual]) and a similar wording is found in the covenant made with Pinchas: “and it will be for him and his descendants after him a covenant of priesthood for eternity” (Bamidbar 25:13).

The two covenants forming a ‘framework’ for the others, the first and fourth covenants, were established as a result of calamities. The first comes as a result of the flood, the punishment of a sinful humanity, and in the words of God: “the end of all flesh comes before me because the whole world is filled with evil because of them and behold I will destroy them with the earth … and behold I bring the flood of water on the earth to destroy all flesh which has in it the breath of life under the heavens, all that is on the earth shall die” (Bereishit 6:13-17). The fourth covenant was a result of the incident with Baal-Peor, and here God wants to destroy the entire Jewish people and only the act of bravery by Pinchas brings the plague to an end. In God’s words: “Pinchas son of Elazar son of Aaron the priest has turned my anger away from the children of Israel with his zealousness on my behalf among them and I did not destroy the children of Israel with my jealousy” (Bamidbar 25:11). In the two ‘framework’ covenants, the covenant is signed with the righteous of the nation, with Noah and Pinchas. These two covenant are given as a reward, recompense for the righteous, and therefore the one who is obligated to keep them is God and there is no obligation falling on the people who are included in the covenant. It is God that promises to never again bring a flood to the world, in the first covenant: “and I shall establish my covenant with you and there will not be another flood to destroy the earth” (Bereishit 9:11), and in the same way a promise is made to Pinchas: “therefore I say, behold I give him my covenant of peace and it will be for him and his descendants after him a covenant of priesthood forever” (Bamidbar 25:12-13).

In contrast, the common ground of the two middle covenants in the range is the observance of the conditions of the covenant - the obligation to observe, or in the language of the Bible “to guard”, the sign of the covenant. In the covenant with Abraham, circumcision is the sign of the covenant: “this is the covenant that you shall observe between me and you and your descendants after you to circumcise every male and you shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin and it will be a sign of the covenant between me and you” (Bereishit 18:1-11). The Sabbath is the sign of the covenant made with the children of Israel at Sinai: “And the children of Israel observed the Sabbath, to keep the Sabbath for all generations, an eternal covenant between me and the children of Israel, a sign for all eternity” (Shemot 31:16-17).

A sign of the covenant also appears in the first covenant as a result of the flood, and it is a rainbow that appears in the clouds: “And God said, this is the sign which I give between me and you and between every living creature that is with you for all generations. My rainbow I give in the clouds and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth and it will be that when I bring clouds over the earth and a rainbow is seen in the clouds and I will remember my covenant between me and you and between every living creature in every flesh and there will not be again water for floods to destroy all flesh … and God said to Noah, this is the sign of the covenant which I established between me and all flesh which is upon the earth” (Bereishit 9:12-17). Only the fourth covenant lacks a sign. The lack of a sign derives from the nature of the covenant, which in this case is identical to the sign: in the existence of the priesthood there is a sign which can be seen clearly - the existence of priests from the priestly house of “Pinchas son of Aaron the priest”. To this uniqueness of the fourth covenant there is an additional facet: only with this covenant is word of the covenant not given to the person that the covenant involves (or: also involving him): Noah, Abraham and Moses are leaders of Israel (that the covenant and the sign of the covenant - the observance of the Sabbath - is incumbent on them too). Word of the covenant of priesthood is not given directly to him but rather to Moses, the leader of Israel, who will be a faithful witness to the giving of the promise to the house of priests. The uniqueness of the fourth component of the system of covenants bears witness to the fact that we have before us an expression of a literary template commonly found in the Bible, the model of Three-Four, in which the fourth component represents the climax of the unit and its uniqueness. In many examples of this template there is also a close connection between the third component, which directs us in an anticipation of the climax, and the fourth component, which concludes this sophisticated literary structure. And in fact we see that the common ground between the final two covenants is the giving of the justification for the existence of the covenant: “because for six days God made the heavens and the earth and on the seventh day God ceased and rested” (Shemot 31:17); “since he was jealous on behalf of his God and atoned for the children of Israel” (Bamidbar 25:13).

Here we see that one who reads the Torah needs to be aware not only of the portion that is before his eyes but also the connections and their interlinking connections between the various portions, which, when they come together, create a sophisticated literary structure, which show the trends common to them and in this case the trend towards glorifying the priesthood, which is situated at the centre of the human circle and at its head.

Professor Yair Zakobitz
Bible Department

Literature of the Sages - “Pinchas is Elijah”

The assertion that “Pinchas is Elijah” (quoted from “Yalkut Shimoni” on the Torah portion of Pinchas, Remez 9) is found in similar wording and form in many places in the sources of the Sages. Why do they identify Pinchas son of Elazar son of Aaron the priest as Elijah the Tishbite?

In the story of the concubine in Gibeah (Judges 20:28) it is written “and Pinchas son of Elazar son of Aaron stood before it [=the Ark of the Covenant] in those days…” The mention of the name of Pinchas in such a late time period, towards the end of the period of the Judges, awakened the imagination of those involved in Aggadic literature and they viewed Pinchas as having extreme longevity and supernatural powers. In this way the ground was laid for associating Pinchas with a later figure, Elijah the Prophet, who lived in the time of the kings.

This is not the only reason for the association. We can point to a number of characteristics common to both Pinchas and Elijah and we will mention two of these:

• (a) Both were said to be zealous for God. Of Pinchas it is written “with his zealousness on my behalf” (Bamidbar 25:11), while Elijah admits “'I have been very jealous for the LORD” (Kings I 19:10);
• (b) Pinchas publicly kills Zimri, who performed idol worship (Bamidbar 25:14), while Elijah, in a mass gathering of the nation, kills the prophets of Baal (Kings I 18:40);

Therefore, a significant similarity can be found between the life stories of Pinchas and Elijah, but this does not yet explain why it is determined that “Pinchas is Elijah”. A clue to this lies apparently in the fact that by uniting these figures Elijah is made into a priest (and Elijah’s lineage is not brought in Bible, only that he was resident in Gilead [Kings I 17:1]). But who, when and why would someone want to say that Elijah the prophet, who according to Malachi 3:23 will announce the arrival of the Messiah, was a priest?

It seems that the tradition that Elijah was a priest already existent in the times of the Second temple. This tradition remained almost unmentioned in the literature of the Sages, but it returned to appear in later Midrashim (homiletical literature). These findings lead researchers to the following thesis: the idea that Elijah was a priest developed in the days of the Hasmonean Kingdom, out of a desire to glorify this kingdom, which was headed by a king-priest and to give it messianic significance. Supporters of the Hasmonean house looked for biblical “precedents” for priestly characters who were also warriors, like those of the Hasmonean house who fought for the Jewish faith and Elijah was seen as suitable because of his zealousness towards God. Identifying Elijah with another zealot, Pinchas, made him into a priest. When large scale opposition by the nation to the Hasmonean kingdom began to develop, this tradition was almost totally repressed. Even after the destruction of the Temple, when the reasons for the opposition to the Hasmoneans no longer existed, the Sages continued to ignore them, maybe due to the conflict with Christianity, which claimed that Jesus was both the messiah and a priest. Only in a later period, when the conflict with Christianity changed, did the ancient traditions arose again to the surface.

[According to: M. Ayley, “Where did Elijah come from - lineage and extraction of Elijah the Prophet in the homiletics of the Sages”, Tel Aviv 1994, Pages 43-66]

Law and Custom - Kiddush and “Kiddusha Rabba”

The Mishna (Berachot 8:1) brings as one of the arguments between the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai, the question of the order of the two blessings which are recited at meals on the Sabbath and festivals, the “blessings of the day” on one hand (such as “Blessed are You O God, who sanctifies the Sabbath” or “Who sanctifies Israel and the Day of Remembrance” [on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year]) and the blessing over wine on the other hand (“Who creates the fruit of the vine”). According to the opinion of the House of Shammai, the “blessing of the day” must precede the blessing over wine, while the House of Hillel holds oppositely, and each house has its own reasoning. Either way, we have learnt that already in the early stage of the Tannaic Period, even before the destruction of the Temple, it was customary to sanctify the day - that is: to testify to the holiness of the Sabbath or festival day - by reciting a text known as “Kiddush” (Sanctification) in conjunction with the drinking of wine.

On the Sabbath day the Kiddush is said twice, once at the evening meal and once during the day, after the morning prayers (and this is true also of festivals) and in both cases we act according to the opinion of the House of Shammai. However there is a difference in terms of content between the Kiddush of the of the Sabbath evening and the Kiddush of the Sabbath morning. In the evening of the Sabbath we start by quoting from the Torah the story of the first Sabbath, the cosmic Sabbath, the Sabbath of the Creation: “And the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their host; and on the seventh day God finished His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made”, etc (Bereishit 2:1-3). On the Sabbath day itself we recite other biblical passages, and in this there are various customs, but in most of them the following passage is found: “And the children of Israel observed the Sabbath, to keep the Sabbath for all generations, an eternal covenant” (Shemot 31:16). This passage and other passages that are customarily recited together with it, such as the commandment from the Ten Commandments dealing with the Sabbath, speak of the Sabbath connected to the giving of the Torah and it being a sign of a covenant between Israel and its God. In contrast with the cosmic Sabbath of the evening Kiddush, we have here a Sabbath which is exclusively for the Jewish people. It is interesting to note that the transformation from the Sabbath of creation to the Sabbath of the giving of the Torah is also expressed in the prayers of the Sabbath. In the evening of the Sabbath we mention in the “Amida” (“standing”) prayer (also known as the “Shmoneh Esrei” [the “Eighteen fold” blessing]) the creation of the world, while in the morning prayers of the Sabbath we speak of the giving of the Torah: “Moses rejoiced in the gift of his portion, because he was called a faithful servant … And the two tablets of the covenant he brought down in his hands and the observance of the Sabbath was written upon them”, etc. It seems that the approach that the Sabbath has at least two facets, universal and national, is not unique only to the “Kiddush” of the Sabbath.

We find that the “Kiddush” of the day is called “Kiddusha Rabba”, that is the “Great Kiddush”. Why did it merit this name? Most opinions say that this is meant ironically: the “Kiddush” of the Sabbath morning is shorter that the Sabbath evening “Kiddush” and in order to not lessen its status, it is called “great”. In many places there is the custom to make the “Kiddusha Rabba” in public after the prayer service, especially when celebrating a special event in the synagogue, such as a Bar Mitzvah or the calling up of a bridegroom to the Torah reading close to the day of his wedding.