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Throughout my study of righteousness, I have only found two criteria defining man’s righteousness:

Believe the Lord

Genesis 15:6
Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.
Genesis 15:5-7 (in Context) Genesis 15 (Whole Chapter)

Obey Him

Deuteronomy 6:25
And if we are careful to obey all this law before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us, that will be our righteousness.”
Deuteronomy 6:24-25 (in Context) Deuteronomy 6 (Whole Chapter)  

I have now found a third: Zealousness for God’s Honor among His Followers 

Psalm 106:30-31
But Phinehas stood up and intervened, and the plague was checked.  This was credited to him as righteousness for endless generations to come.
Psalm 106:30-31 (in Context) Psalm 106 (Whole Chapter)

But what exactly did Phinehas do?  Numbers 25 records it:

 ¹ While Israel was staying in Shittim, the men began to indulge in sexual immorality with Moabite women, ² who invited them to the sacrifices to their gods. The people ate and bowed down before these gods. ³ So Israel joined in worshiping the Baal of Peor. And the LORD’s anger burned against them.

 ⁴ The LORD said to Moses, “Take all the leaders of these people, kill them and expose them in broad daylight before the LORD, so that the LORD’s fierce anger may turn away from Israel.”

 ⁵ So Moses said to Israel’s judges, “Each of you must put to death those of your men who have joined in worshiping the Baal of Peor.”

 ⁶ Then an Israelite man brought to his family a Midianite woman right before the eyes of Moses and the whole assembly of Israel while they were weeping at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. ⁷ When Phinehas son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest, saw this, he left the assembly, took a spear in his hand ⁸ and followed the Israelite into the tent. He drove the spear through both of them—through the Israelite and into the woman’s body. Then the plague against the Israelites was stopped; ⁹ but those who died in the plague numbered 24,000.

 ¹⁰ The LORD said to Moses, ¹¹ “Phinehas son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest, has turned my anger away from the Israelites; for he was as zealous as I am for my honor among them, so that in my zeal I did not put an end to them. ¹² Therefore tell him I am making my covenant of peace with him. ¹³ He and his descendants will have a covenant of a lasting priesthood, because he was zealous for the honor of his God and made atonement for the Israelites.”

Here again, we see what an atheist would call brutality, rewarded by God in the name of God.  What kind of God is that?  An honorable God.  That’s what kind.

To provide some context, God has just freed the Hebrew slaves from their captivity, showing Himself superior to the Egyptain gods.  Frankly, He’s proven that He exists and that the other gods actually do not exist… and then the Hebrews go and start worshipping another false God, hence dishonoring Him.  I never realized before now that God was zealous for His own honor, let alone that being zealous for His honor would be accounted to me as righteousness, but there it is!

So what is honor? According Merriam-Webster, honor can mean several things:

a good name or public esteem
Only part of the context matches this definition, because worshipping another god does not besmirch God’s name per se, but rather, it ignores Him.  Ignore God, and He has no name or public esteem to speak of.  By killing these violators of God, it doesn’t seem to me that Phinehas was trying to keep God from being ignored.  Dead people cannot esteem God, but neither can people who can be sexually tempted to worship Baal.  So, while I would certainly argue that only a man who esteems God would do what Phinehas did, I do not believe that God’s good name or public esteem was the direct subject of Phinehas’s zealousness.

a showing of usually merited respect
Again, this doesn’t fit the entire context, because even while Phinehas was showing God merited respect, God was not the direct subject of Phinehas’ action, but the people he killed were.  So, while I would argue that Phinehas’s actions flowed at least in part from His respect for God, this wasn’t the direct subject of his zealousness.

chastity, purity
This fits the situation in my opinion.  This isn’t to say that Phinehas can protect God’s own purity per se, but bringing in that particular woman was an act of, not only disobedience, but impurity.  When people allow themselves to become defiled, their act defiles God.  Understand what I mean here.  God cannot be defiled per se, but a man’s acts can defile God’s name and God’s esteem among you.  This brings us back to our first definition of honor above, but gives it context… chastity and purity.  Losing ones honor in this way is akin to dishonoring your spouse through a sexual relationship with a person who is not your spouse.  Such an act dishonors your spouse.  Though the act was yours, though your spouse remains honorable, your spouse is nonetheless dishonored by you through your lack of purity, because you brought that impurity to your spouse and spread it, hence “ceremonially” defiling your spouse. Because God because is spirit, God cannot be defiled by such physical acts, but the action is the same on your end.  Your relationship with God can in fact be defiled; God as you see Him can be defiled.  God as others see Him in your relationship with Him can be defiled… which brings us back to our definition of honor above, where one’s name in the eyes of others is defiled, though the God Himself is not.

To see how this works in context, Phinehas was defending the purity of the love-relationship between Israel and God.  God was already purging Israel through a plague, so that corporate Israel’s relationship with God could once again be pure.  Phinehas was doing the same when he killed the man the Midianite woman, and was doing it for the sake of Israel’s relationship with God, which as a priest, Phinehas was sworn to do.  However, none of the other priests took such action… only Phinehas did, because of His zealousness for God, and God’s honor among Israel.

And God credited it to Him (and His descendants!) as righteousness.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 9th, 2009 at 6:42 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.