Psalm 106.28–31 recounts the
story from Numbers 25 of Israel’s worship of Baal of Peor and the intervention
of Phinehas, which turned back God’s wrath from the people. Psalm 106.31
(105.31 lxx) concludes this account by stating, ‘And it was reckoned to him
[Phinehas] for righteousness [tsedaqah / dikaiosynēn] from
generation to generation, forever.’ According to Wright, this verse
demonstrates that the term ‘righteousness’ means ‘covenant membership’ because
the story in Numbers concludes with God granting Phinehas a covenant of eternal
priesthood (Numbers 25.13), and the psalmist concludes his account by
describing an eternal ‘reckoning of righteousness’. One can easily see the
logic by which Wright has reached this conclusion, but the Achilles’ heel of
the argument is the other use of the term ‘righteousness’ within the psalm
itself. As we have seen, Psalm 106.3 (105.3 lxx) sets up the rest of the psalm by
proclaiming, ‘Blessed are those who keep justice and do righteousness [ʿōśēh
tsedaqah / poiountes dikaiosynēn] at all times!’ When read in the
light of this opening, it becomes apparent that the psalmist’s purpose in
speaking of righteousness being reckoned to Phinehas is not to refer directly
to the covenant that God granted to him (although an allusion to that result of
his righteous behaviour may be present by way of synecdoche), but rather to
present him as an example of one whose actions fulfilled the ideal commended
at the start of the psalm.
This reading of Psalm 106.31
(105.31 lxx) is supported by Jubilees’ rewriting of Genesis’ account of
the slaughter of the Shechemites. Scholars have long noted that the author of Jubilees
rewrites this story with echoes of the biblical accounts of Phinehas. The
purpose of this rewriting is in part to suggest a causative relation between
Levi’s participation in the slaughter and the priesthood granted to the
Levitical tribe, but what is interesting for our study is the manner in which
this passage appropriates the formulation from Psalm 106.31 (105.31 lxx). The
author writes:
they slew them under tortures,
and it was reckoned unto them for righeousness, and it is written down to them
for righteousness . . . And we remember the righteousness which the man [Levi]
fulfilled during his life, at all periods of the year; until a thousand
generations they will record it, and it will come to him to his descendants
after him, and he has been recorded in the heavenly tablets as a friend and a
righteous man. (Jubilees 30.17-20)
Thus, the author of Jubilees reuses
the formulation of Psalm 106.31 (105.31 lxx) in order to describe the slaughter
of the Shechemites as a righteous act that will be remembered for generations
to come. This righteous act is depicted as the reason for God’s selection of
the Levites for priesthood, but the phrase ‘reckoned for righteousness’ clearly
refers not to the establishment of a Levitical priestly covenant but rather to
the moral evaluation of the slaughter. This deployment of the phraseology from
Psalm 106.31 (105.31 lxx) significantly weakens Wright’s argument. (J. Andrew
Cowan, “N. T. Wright and justification revisited: a contrarian perspective,” in
One God, One People, One Future in Honor of N. T. Wright, ed. John Anthony
Dunne and Eric Lewellen [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2018], 448-49)
