Parashat Pinchas begins with the immediate aftermath of the débâcle with which last week’s parashah, Balak, concluded.
Parashat Balak concluded with Bil’am’s demonic advice to Balak, king of Moab. Since he, Bil’am, had failed to curse the Children of Israel, and since Balak still perceived them as a threat, Bil’am suggested a guaranteed method of weakening them, perhaps fatally:
Their G-d is a G-d Who hates sexual immorality, he explained to Balak; so send the daughters of your nation to seduce their men, and their G-d will punish them (Yerushalmi Sanhedrin 10:2, Sifrei Mattot 157 s.v. הן הנה, Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer 47 et al., an event which the Torah alludes to in Numbers 31:16).
And his evil advice worked horribly well: as last week’s parashah concludes by recording, 24,000 Jews died in the resulting plague (Numbers 25:9), a plague which Pinchas stopped by publicly killing the Jewish collaborator Zimri, prince of the Tribe of Shim’on, and his paramour Cozbi, Midianite princess, daughter of Tzur, one of the five kings of Midian (Numbers 31:8).
And now Parashat Pinchas continues:
“Hashem spoke to Moshe saying: Pinchas son of Elazar son of Aaron the Kohen has turned My fury away from the Children of Israel by his being zealous for My zealousness in their midst, so I did not eliminate the Children of Israel in My zealousness; therefore say: I hereby give him My Covenant of Peace” (25:10-12).
This “Covenant of Peace” was Pinchas’ reward for killing two people - and thereby saving the rest of the nation from annihilation.
I suggest that this is the inference of the name פִּינְחָס, Pinchas:
24,000 Jews died in the plague, out of an overall population of 600,000 Jewish men. Adding 600,000 Jewish women, the adult population was 1,200,000, which is fifty times the number of people who died in the plague.
Hence פִּינְחָס, denoting פִּי נ' חָס: He had mercy on 50 times as many.
We return to the “Covenant of Peace”, and we note a peculiarity: the letter vav in the word שָׁלוֹם, “Peace”, is broken (in Masoretic nomenclature, ו' קְטִיעָה).
Usually, if a single letter in a Torah-scroll is defective, then the entire Torah-scroll is invalid, the letter must be re-written and corrected before the Torah-scroll can be used for public Torah-reading (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Tefillin, Mezuzah, & Sefer Torah 7:9; Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh De’a 274:5-6; Kitzur Shulchan Aruch 24:4 et al.). But in this specific word שָׁלוֹם, the letter vav must be defective, broken!
Why would this be?
The word שָׁלוֹם means “peace”; but without the vav it becomes שָׁלֵם, shalem, meaning “perfect”, “complete”. Hence the Talmud cites Rav Yehudah, who cited Shmuel’s explanation: “‘therefore say: I hereby give him My Covenant of Peace’ - when it is perfect, not when it is lacking. But the Torah writes שָׁלוֹם, peace! Said Rav Nachman: The vav in שָׁלוֹם is broken” (Kiddushin 66b).
(Rav Yehudah was Shmuel’s disciple in 3rd-century Babylon. Rav Nachman was contemporaneous with Rav Yehudah, also a disciple of Shmuel, both of them in Pumpedita.)
More recently, different commentators have offered different explanations for this broken vav:
The 13th century French Tosafist and Biblical commentator Rabbi Chaim Paltiel, noting that the broken vav can be viewed as a small vav which also resembles the letter yud, writes:
“The vav is small to indicate that until now, Pinchas did not officiate as a Kohen; but now, his Kehunah [Priesthood] was complete. As our Sages of blessed memory said (Zevachim 101b), Pinchas did not officiate as Kohen until he killed Zimri, which is why the word שָׁלוֹם, ‘Peace’, is written as though it is שָׁלֵים, ‘complete’”.
Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch (Germany, 1808-1888) offers a different (though related) explanation:
“The vav in שָׁלוֹם, ‘Peace’, is broken…precisely because the Pinchas-Covenant is the Peace whose perfection has been restored. It is precisely in the place where genuine peace is violated that the zealousness of a Pinchas is essential. The fight of a Pinchas is to restore שָׁלוֹם, ‘Peace’, to being שָׁלֵם, ‘whole’, ‘perfect’”.
I suggest another explanation: —
The word “vav” means “hook”, something which connects two objects. The letter vav in the word שָׁלוֹם indicates Pinchas’ connexion with G-d. By breaking this vav, the Torah suggests two opposite connotations:
On the one hand, Pinchas had to “break” his connexion with G-d, however briefly, in order to kill Zimri and Cozbi. He saw this disgusting display of immorality, and powered by zealousness, killed them both. To be sure, had he asked any Beit Din (Jewish court of law), they would have forbidden him to kill them (Sanhedrin 82a); but in the heat of the moment, burning with pure and righteous fury, he did the right thing by killing them.
On the other hand, G-d Himself shrank the vav in the word שָׁלוֹם, making it resemble a yud - adding a letter from His own holy Name to Pinchas’ peace.
Last week, in Parashat Balak, the Torah recorded Bil’am’s journey to attempt to curse Israel. As he was riding on his donkey, the donkey turned aside from the path because she saw an angel on the path, וְחַרְבּוֹ שְׁלוּפָה בְּיָדוֹ, “his sword drawn in his hand” (Numbers 22:23).
The heathen prophet Bil’am couldn’t yet see this angel which his donkey saw; only after the donkey spoke to her master did he, too, see this angel, וְחַרְבּוֹ שְׁלֻפָה בְּיָדוֹ, “his sword drawn in his hand” (v. 31).
There is a subtle though important difference: The donkey saw the sword שְׁלוּפָה (drawn), with a vav; Bil’am saw the same sword שְׁלֻפָה (drawn), without the vav. Bil’am did not have the vav, that connexion, with G-d, which even his donkey had.
Two other men saw an angel וְחַרְבּוֹ שְׁלוּפָה בְּיָדוֹ, “his sword drawn in his hand”: Joshua (Joshua 5:13) and King David (1 Chronicles 21:16). Both had the vav, the connexion with G-d. From Bil’am alone did G-d remove the vav, the connexion.
Similarly Bil’am’s prayer: תָּמֹת נַפְשִׁי, “May my soul die the death of the righteous” (Numbers 23:10).
One other man in the Tanach used the same words: Samson’s final prayer: תָּמוֹת נַפְשִׁי, “May my soul die with the Philistines” (Judges 16:30).
The same phenomenon: Bi’lam’s prayer is תָּמֹת, without the vav; Samson’s prayer is תָּמוֹת, with the vav. Until his very last moment, Samson kept the vav, his connexion with G-d, which Bil’am had destroyed.
And of course Samson’s prayer was answered, while Bil’am’s wasn’t: Bil’am ended up being killed ignominiously by the sword, revenge for the horrific damage he had inflicted upon Israel (Numbers 31:8).
Bil’am lost his connexion with G-d.
By killing the Jewish collaborator and his Midianite paramour, and by thereby stopping the plague, Pinchas was granted a very special connexion with G-d: the vav in שָׁלוֹם, Pinchas’ Covenant of Peace, was altered to resemble a yud, the letter from G-d’s holy Name.