One of my favourite Old Testament figures
is Phinehas, in part as what we read in Num 25/Psa 106:30-31 destroys
Protestant theologies of salvation. For more on this, see Response
to a Recent Attempt to Defend Imputed Righteousness and John
Murray on Genesis 15:6 and Psalm 106:31.
On the chiastic structure of Num 25 and
Phineas, John W. Welch wrote the following:
Phineas, a grandson
of Aaron the High Priest, spontaneously took the law into his own hand and
killed Zimri, the son of a Simeonite prince, and his consort Cozbi, the
daughter of a Midianite chief, who in plain sight had defiantly come into the
camp together and apparently committed sacrilege, being together after such
relationships had been forbidden. God had commanded the people to abate this
apostasy and hang the heads of offending people up before the Lord. This
account in Num 25 is structured chiastically:
A the people commit
whoredoms and idolatry in the matter of Baal-Peor, and Moses commands
that everyone who had committed these crimes be killed. (1-5)
B the flagrant
appearance together of an Israelite man and a Midianite woman in the
sight of Moses and all the people. (6)
C the bold action
of Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, piercing the offending man
of Israel and the Midianite woman with his javelin. (7-8)
D the plague was
averted for most, but only after twenty-four thousand had died of the plague.
(8-9)
C’ the zealous
action of Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, turned back the wrath
of the Lord from the children of Israel. (10-11)
B’ Moses is
told to pronounce a covenant of peace with the people (12-13), and the
names of Zimri and Cozbi are given. (14-15)
A’ a mandate given
to vex the Midianites (twice) because of their guile in the matter of Peor
(mentioned twice). (16-18)
What does chiasmus
contribute legally to this narrative? The text centers on a positive view of
Phinehas’s preservation of the people of Israel, whose condition was in serious
difficulty, with twenty-four thousand having already died of the plague. By
positioning at its center the fact that the plague ceased, the chiastic arrangement
recognizes God’s ratification of Phinehas’s exceptional conduct.
By framing this central
point with particular facts of legal significance, the narrative also justifies
Phinehas in this extraordinary homicide. An unusual state of emergency clearly
faced the entire nation, implicitly invoking the rare biblical principle that it
is better for on man to perish than the entire people be destroyed. Phinehas
acted suddenly and spontaneously, a mitigating factor mentioned in the law
codes in Exod 21 and Num 35. Phinehas had not been lying in wait to entrap or
deceive Zimri and Cozbi, whose guilt was open and conspicuously obvious to all.
Their defiant conduct went consciously contrary to Moses’s public command and
explicit warning at the beginning of the narrative. In the end, the case
concludes with Moses pronouncing a covenant of peace between God and the people
and doubly commanding them to vex the Midianites.
In this homicide
case, chiasmus serves as a figure of thought, “a powerful engine for organizing,
inflecting and generating ideas” (Hariman, “What is Chiasmus,” 48). Decisions
in hard legal cases, especially homicides, call for strong articulations that
persuade and communicate details that might otherwise elude notice. (John W.
Welch, “Narrating Homicide Chiastically,” in John W. Welch and Donald W. Parry,
eds., Chiasmus: The State of the Art [Provo, Utah: BYU Studies and Book
of Mormon Central,2010], 151-76, here, pp. 158-59)
