The people, however, remained unimpressed. The tribes spoke disparagingly of him: Have you seen this grandson of Puti, the father of whose mother used to fatten calves for idolatrous sacrifices, and he has dared to slay a prince of one of Israel’s tribes!
The Jerusalem Talmud states that Pinchas’s deed did not meet with the approval of Moses and the elders. One sage said that Pinchas would have been excommunicated had not the Holy Spirit announced that Pinchas’s devotion to God was sincere.
In light of Pinchas’s act, how are we to evaluate other acts of zealotry? How are we to know that such an act is not merely murder? Such judgment is not always easy.
In his Torah Temimah,Rabbi Baruch Epstein interprets this episode in the context of community. “Even in his wrath, zeal, and defiance, he continued to see himself as part of the total community. His separatist response was but a means, not an end unto itself. When extremism becomes an end, a norm, a standard of everyday life, it is to be rejected and abhorred, even as the sages sought to dismiss the singular action of Pinchas.”
What we learn from this is that such an act of kana’ut, even in light of God’s approbation and reward, is not to be tolerated by the people. Indeed, even in God’s blessing and reward we read a statement that is in direct opposition to Pinchas’s act: “Behold, I give unto him My covenant of peace.”
Why grant the man of passion, force, and intolerance a gift so antithetical to his personality and character? Because the blessing was not a reward but an antidote.
The sudden urge to respond violently demands a Divine blessing of peace, a “guarantee of protection against the inner enemy lurking inside the zealous perpetrator of the sudden deed.”
According to the Netziv, “In reward for turning away the wrath of the Holy One, blessed be He, He blessed him with the attribute of peace, that he should not be quick-tempered or angry. Since it was only natural that such a deed as Pinchas’s should leave in his heart an intense emotional unrest afterward, the Divine blessing was designed to cope with this situation and promised peace and tranquility of soul.”
Or, as Rambam posits in Hilchot Deot, “The right way is the mean in each group of dispositions common to humanity; namely, that disposition which is equally distant from the two extremes in its class, not being nearer to the one than to the other. Hence our sages exhorted us that a person should always evaluate his dispositions and so adjust them that they shall be at the mean between the extremes.”
The middle way is the wisest way. Avoiding extremes is the desired path.
Rambam prescribes the antidote for one extreme to be the other extreme. Hence, for Pinchas’s violent act, peace is the antidote.
* * * * *
Kana’ut and peace are two extremes in opposition to one another. The Ktav Sofer explains that Pinchas, prone to zealotry, needed to move to the opposite extreme of peace in order to regain “the right path which is the normal mean in every class of dispositions.”
That any act of kana’ut, even by the most pious and exemplary religious personality, demands scrutiny is supported in the haftarah of Parshas Pinchas, which focuses on the life of Eliyahu HaNavi. Indeed, Chazal were of the opinion that “Pinchas zeh Eliyahu” – Pinchas and Eliyahu are one and the same.
As Eliyahu escaped to the desert, fearful of Izevel, God inquired, “What are you doing here, Eliyahu?” Eliyahu responded: “I have been very zealous [kano kineiti] for the Lord God of hosts. The children of Yisrael have forsaken Thy covenant, thrown down Thy altars, and slain Thy prophets with the sword, and only I am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.”
