Commentaria in Numeros
The Annals of France record of St. Louis the king that, when he was uttering prayers from the psalms of David to God, and some one who sought pardon for a man guilty of a capital crime had intervened, and the king, as one doing something else, had assented, but presently had come upon that verse of Psalm 105: “Blessed are they that keep judgment, and do justice at all times,” he at once ordered the man to whom he had granted pardon to be recalled, and made it void, uttering this memorable sentence: “A prince who can punish a crime, and does not punish it, is no less guilty before God than if he himself had committed it; and that of piety the sixth was here, verse 4, when God commanded those fornicating with Beelphegor to be hanged; the seventh was in this verse, when God sent the plague for the same crime, which Phinees by his zeal averted and dispelled. So Rupert.
9. AND THERE WERE SLAIN (that is, as well by the plague sent by God as by the sentence and gibbet of the judges, of which in verse 5) TWENTY-FOUR THOUSAND MEN.—For if those hanged by the judges were not comprehended in this number, Scripture would surely have numbered them separately. So Abulensis. Behold here, says Rupert, how God, as a rhinoceros, or rather monoceros, is a lover of chastity, and punishes and overthrows the most foul Beelphegor and his followers.
12. BEHOLD I GIVE HIM (Phinees) THE PEACE OF MY COVENANT—that is, the security and certainty of my pact; as if to say: For this zeal of Phinees I firmly decree, and as it were covenant, and promise him.
13. AND THE COVENANT (which shall be) BOTH TO HIM AND TO HIS SEED OF THE PRIESTHOOD FOR EVER—that he himself with his stock, after his father Eleazar, shall succeed to the pontificate, so that the pontificate shall remain inviolably in his family and posterity for ever. Others hold that the priesthood is here called the peace of the covenant, that is, the covenant of peace or peaceable, by hypallage, for two reasons: the first is that priests, more than other men, seem to be in peace, friendship and fellowship with God. For daily they stand in the sight of God, converse with Him, receive responses: to Him they offer the prayers, oblations and vows of themselves and the people; the second, that the priesthood rightly administered was a cause of peace, concord, and of all tranquillity and happiness between God and men, on account of the prayers and sacrifices of the priests by which God is appeased toward the world.
Hear here a paradox of Blessed Peter Damian, epistle 12, or, as others note, 11, chapter 2, to Pope Nicholas II of Rome, where he says that God willed that Phinees himself henceforth, as a reward of this noble deed, should live until the end of the world, and thinks that Phinees was the same who was afterward called Elias; the same was held by some ancient Hebrews, as Origen testifies, tome VII on John. For there Damian, citing these words of this chapter: “Behold I give him the peace of my covenant, and the covenant of the priesthood for ever shall be both to him and to his seed,” says: “The Lord gave him the peace of His covenant, because, all trouble of the flesh being quieted, He appointed him to live until the end of the world in the delights of paradise. For he is, unless I am mistaken, Elias the prophet, who was translated into heaven by fiery horses: to whom the name Phinees was given by his parents, but the name Elias was an accident by event: for Elias is interpreted God the Lord, which name is believed to have been imposed on him on this occasion, that when he was sent as legate by the people to Ruben and Gad, who had built a new altar, he received from them this answer of excuse: The most mighty God the Lord himself knoweth, if we have built this altar with a spirit of transgression. Hence therefore Phinees was called Elias, that their answer may seem to be his appellation.”
This opinion is new and improbable, and Tornielli refutes it with many arguments. Damian, however, proves it first from St. Jerome, who in the Hebrew Questions on 1 Paralipomenon teaches the same.
I answer that this book either is not St. Jerome’s, as some have noted, or that St. Jerome says these things, as he does others, not of his own mind but according to the opinion of the Hebrews. For such are the things which he relates in the same place concerning the mother of Moses, that she was the paternal aunt of her husband, and that Moses after the giving of the law commanded his father to put her away; and that he himself afterwards begot of another wife Eldad and Medad, brothers of Moses, though not uterine.
Secondly, he proves it from 1 Paralipomenon ix, 19, where Scripture, speaking of those who had returned from the Babylonian captivity, says: “These are the Corites over the works of the ministry, etc., and Phinees the son of Eleazar was their ruler;” therefore Phinees lived even after the Babylonian captivity. I answer, denying the consequence: that Phinees is another from this one of ours; for that one was a Levite, this one was a priest; that one was of the descendants of Core, this one was the grandson of Aaron; wherefore the Eleazar also who was the father of Phinees there was other than this one of ours.
Here, then, there is promised to Phinees only the continuance of the priesthood in his posterity.
This was a great reward. For the high priest among the Jews was in the highest honour, and in the greatest wealth: for he alone received the greatest part of the oblations, of the firstfruits and the tithes, nay, as many will have it, the tithe of the tithe, that is, the hundredth part of all the fruits of the whole of Judea. Hence he was the supreme judge of all, Deuteronomy xvii, 9, and he joined marriages with kings, and at length even obtained the sceptre of the kingdom itself. For the Machabees were at once priests and leaders, and soon after kings of Israel. For Aristobulus, son of John Hyrcanus and grandson of Simon Machabeus, was high priest, and was the first to put upon himself the diadem of the kingdom, as Josephus teaches, book XIII of the Antiquities, chapter xix; and after him his son Alexander reigned, to whom succeeded the younger Aristobulus, who were at once priests and kings: and these all were descended from Phinees, as their parent Mathathias both says and glories, 1 Machabees ii, 54. See here what zeal and the zealous deserve with God.
You will say: By the law and the right of nations Phinees, as the first-born, ought to succeed his father Eleazar in the priesthood; therefore no new benefit is here conferred upon him.
I answer that certain new things are here conferred on him: for first, a longer life is here assured to him, namely that he shall outlive his father, and so in fact be high priest. Secondly, it is assured to him that the priesthood shall remain in his family.
You will say secondly: The priesthood, a little after Phinees, was transferred from his family to the family of Ithamar, namely to Heli: for, as Josephus teaches, book V of the Antiquities, last chapter, and book VIII, chapter i, Eleazar was succeeded in the priesthood by his son Phinees, he by his son Abiezer, he by his son Docci, he by his son Ozi; from whom it was transferred to Heli (who was of the family of Ithamar, as is plain from 1 Paralipomenon xxiv, 3), to whom succeeded his son Phinees, then Achitob’s grandson, then his son Ahias, then his brother Achimelech, then his son Abiathar (as Tornielli teaches in the year of the world 2940), from whom again Solomon transferred the priesthood to Sadoc, who was of the family of Eleazar and Phinees: how then is an eternal priesthood here promised to Phinees?