Parashat Pinchas

¹⁰ Then Adonai spoke to Moses saying, ¹¹ “Phinehas son of Eleazar son of Aaron the kohen has turned away My anger from Bnei-Yisrael because he was very zealous for Me among them, so that I did not put an end to Bnei-Yisrael in My zeal. ¹² So now say: See, I am making with him a covenant of shalom! ¹³ It will be for him and his descendants after him a covenant of an everlasting priesthood—because he was zealous for his God and atoned for Bnei-Yisrael.”

¹⁴ The name of the Israelite man killed with the Midianite woman was Zimri son of Salu, a prince of a Simeonite ancestral household. ¹⁵ The name of the executed Midianite woman was Cozbi, daughter of Zur—he was a tribal head of an ancestral house in Midian.

¹⁶ Adonai spoke to Moses saying, ¹⁷ “Deal with the Midianites as enemies and strike them. ¹⁸ For they have been enemies to you in their deceptions of you in the matter of Peor and in the matter of Cozbi, the daughter of a Midianite prince, their sister who was slain on the day of the plague on account of the Peor incident.”

Numbering the Second Generation

26 After the plague, Adonai said to Moses and Eleazar son of Aaron the kohen saying, ² “Take a headcount of the entire community of Bnei-Yisrael, sons twenty years old and upward, by their ancestral houses, all who can serve in Israel’s army.”

³ So Moses and Eleazar the kohen spoke with them on the Moabite plains by the Jordan across from Jericho saying, ⁴ “Just as Adonai commanded Moses, a census will be taken of all men of Bnei-Yisrael who came out of Egypt, from 20 years old and upward.”