
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


This week’s annual cycle Torah reading is parsha “Pinchas,” Numbers 25:10-30:1) and it contains what is sometimes perhaps one of the most perplexing stories in the Torah, that of the cohen or priest Pinchas, who runs through two open idolators with a spear, and is awarded the eternal “Covenant of Peace (Shalom)” by YHVH Himself for the effort.
The Erev Shabbat reading:
The Sabbath Day midrash is all about the ‘apparent’ contradiction. Actually, contradictions, plural:
No wonder it’s been called “problematic.”
And yet the story is undeniable. The connections to the prophet Eliyahu, or Elijah, who was also notably “zealous” (the Hebrew word is the same, as Mark points out) for YHVH are dramatic, and referenced in both the haftorah selection, and even Paul’s commentary in Romans 11.
And Eliyahu, too, had a hand in the deaths of SO many pagan “priests of Baal.”
How do we connect these dots?
The combined two-part reading and Sabbath midrash:
By Hebrew Nation Online | Who Are We?This week’s annual cycle Torah reading is parsha “Pinchas,” Numbers 25:10-30:1) and it contains what is sometimes perhaps one of the most perplexing stories in the Torah, that of the cohen or priest Pinchas, who runs through two open idolators with a spear, and is awarded the eternal “Covenant of Peace (Shalom)” by YHVH Himself for the effort.
The Erev Shabbat reading:
The Sabbath Day midrash is all about the ‘apparent’ contradiction. Actually, contradictions, plural:
No wonder it’s been called “problematic.”
And yet the story is undeniable. The connections to the prophet Eliyahu, or Elijah, who was also notably “zealous” (the Hebrew word is the same, as Mark points out) for YHVH are dramatic, and referenced in both the haftorah selection, and even Paul’s commentary in Romans 11.
And Eliyahu, too, had a hand in the deaths of SO many pagan “priests of Baal.”
How do we connect these dots?
The combined two-part reading and Sabbath midrash: