Testament prophecy, present an unreservedly rosy picture of Israel’s future. Then Phineas’s fierce reaction to the sinners of Baal Peor, which ‘made atonement for the people of Israel’ (25:13) and secured for himself a perpetual priesthood, far from being the last kick of the old sinful generation, as Olson sees it, is in fact a pledge that Israel will be led by men of intense loyalty to the LORD and a guarantee that this younger generation purged of its sinners will enter Canaan. It is therefore