Numbers 25:10-30:1
One and the Same
Last week’s Torah reading ended with a certain Israelite hero slaying a flagrantly offending couple, thereby turning aside God’s wrath. The hero’s name—Pineḥas or Phineḥas—seems connected to the dark-skinned Nubians who dwelt in the Egyptian southland, hence this name may have designated a “southerner” or “dark-skinned one,” though this is far from sure.
Quite apart from his name’s etymology, however, a mystery accompanied the biblical story of Pineḥas. As a reward for his quick action, he was said to have been rewarded with a “covenant of eternal priesthood.” Ancient interpreters were puzzled by this. After all, the Torah specifies that Pineḥas was Aaron’s grandson. Hadn’t the Torah already said that the descendants of Aaron would inherit the priesthood for all subsequent generations (Exod 28:1-4, 29:1-8, etc.)? If so, it would seem that God was rewarding Pineḥas with something that had already been given to him.
Some interpreters saw this “covenant of eternal priesthood” as referring not to the priesthood in general, but to the high priesthood. In other words, Pineḥas and his descendants would forever serve as high priests in the Temple. Ben Sira, a Jewish sage of the early second century BCE, thus wrote that God “established a law for him, a covenant of peace to uphold the sanctuary—that the high priesthood should be for him and his descendants forever” (Sir. 45:24 [Hebrew ms. B]).
But there was another possibility. Interpreters noticed that Pineḥas led an extraordinarily long life. Not only was he around after the death of Moses, but he was still functioning as a kohen at the end of the book of Judges, standing before the ark of the covenant (Jud 20:28).
In fact, the Hebrew Bible contains no account of Pineḥas’s death. (The old Greek translation of the Bible does contain a brief notice of his passing in Joshua 24:33, but this seems to have been a later addition.) Not mentioning his death, interpreters reasoned, could hardly have been an accidental omission. Surely the death of such an honored figure, and someone who had survived so long a period after the days of Moses and Aaron, would have been marked with honored burial and an extended period of mourning, such as that decreed for his grandfather Aaron.
Interpreters thus came to the conclusion that Pineḥas didn’t die. At some point after his last appearance in Jud 20:28, he must have ascended into heaven while he was still alive, just as Enoch and Elijah had. In other words, his “covenant of eternal priesthood” must have meant just that. He would be immortal and hence eternal. But how—and where?
Eventually, attention came to be focused on a later figure, the opponent of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel—none other Israel’s great northern prophet: Elijah. One clue supporting this hypothesis was the fact that, despite Elijah’s fame and glory, Scripture never mentions his last name. From his very first appearance onward, he was just “Elijah,” without the specification “son of X” (the equivalent of a last name in modern societies). Nor does the Bible contain an account of Elijah’s birth or childhood; he just shows up as a grown man.
Could it be that this prophet was none other than Pineḥas redivivus? Pineḥas —the man who had been promised to be a kohen forever—might simply have gone somewhere for a few centuries and then made his reappearance under a different name, a name that sounded suspiciously symbolic (Elijah/Eliahu means “my God is the Lord”).
What is more, Pineḥas and Elijah shared a particular quality: they were both described as being jealous (or “zealous”) on behalf of the Lord. This is what God says of Pineḥas in Num 25:13 (“because he has been zealous for his God”), and it is what Elijah says (twice!) about himself, “I have been extremely zealous/jealous for the Lord” (1 Kings 19:10, 14). Surely this could not be another coincidence!
So it was that midrash came to identify Pineḥas and Elijah as one and the same person, the priest who never died. After he returned to earth for a time, Elijah/ Pineḥas took up his place in heaven again. Elijah’s miraculous ascent into heaven on a fiery chariot is recounted 2 Kings 2.
And there, according to tradition, he remains to this day. When will he return to earth? The prophet Malachi reported God’s words on the subject: “For I will send to you the prophet Elijah, before the great and awesome day of the Lord. And he will return the mind of the fathers to their children, and the children’s minds back to their fathers” (Mal 3:12-14). To which Ben Sira added, “and he will reestablish the [lost] tribes of Israel” (Sir 48:11).