Numbers 25:5–13

⁵So Moses told Israel’s judges, “Kill each of the men who aligned themselves with Baal of Peor.”

PHINEHAS INTERVENES

⁶An Israelite man came bringing a Midianite woman to his relatives in the sight of Moses and the whole Israelite community while they were weeping at the entrance to the tent of meeting. ⁷When Phinehas son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, saw this, he got up from the assembly, took a spear in his hand, ⁸followed the Israelite man into the tent,^C and drove it through both the Israelite man and the woman—through her belly. Then the plague on the Israelites was stopped, ⁹but those who died in the plague numbered twenty-four thousand.^g

¹⁰The Lord spoke to Moses, ¹¹“Phinehas son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, has turned back my wrath from the Israelites because he was zealous among them with my zeal,^Dh so that I did not destroy the Israelites in my zeal. ¹²Therefore declare: I grant him my covenant of peace.^{i 13}It will be a covenant of perpetual priesthood for him and his future descendants,^j because he was zealous for his God and made atonement for the Israelites.”