Phinehas

Saint Phinehas the Righteous was a priest at the time of the Exodus, son of Eleazar and grandson of the high priest Aaron. The Orthodox Church honours him as a righteous saint. Already in his youth, at Shittim, he distinguished himself by his zeal against the sin of Peor.

According to Holy Scripture, grieved by the immorality into which the Moabites and Midianites had succeeded in luring the Israelites, to intermarry with them and worship Baal-⁠peor, Phinehas with his own hand killed an Israelite man and a Midianite woman while they were together in the man's tent, driving a spear through the man and the woman. By this the plague sent by the Lord to punish the Israelites came to an end (Numbers 25:1-9).

Phinehas is commended by the Lord in Numbers 25:10-13 and by King David in Psalm 105 (106 in the Hebrew numbering), because he stopped Israel's fall into the idolatry brought by the Midianite women and stopped the desecration of the sanctuary. According to one source, after the entry into the promised land and the death of his father, he was appointed the third high priest of Israel and served at the sanctuary of Bethel (Judges 20:28). His name first appears in the book of Exodus (6:25). He is also mentioned among those who took part in the destruction of the Midianites.

In Jewish tradition he was also reckoned one of the two spies sent into the city before the taking of Jericho. In the midrash Pirke de-⁠Rabbi Eliezer (chapter 47) and in the kabbalistic book Zohar (part II) it is said: “Phinehas is Elijah.” Medieval legends considered him the first owner of the Spear of Destiny. These last traditions are not part of the teaching of the Church.