Phinehas is the man of zeal. When Israel committed idolatry and sexual immorality with Moabite women at Baal of Peor, and a plague broke out among them killing 24,000, Phinehas took a javelin and killed a man of Israel and the Midianite woman with whom he had committed the sin — in one thrust. "Then the plague was stopped" (Numbers 25:8). God's verdict on Phinehas is one of the most startling in all Scripture: "Phinehas the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, has turned back My wrath from the children of Israel, because he was zealous with My zeal among them, so that I did not consume the children of Israel in My zeal. Therefore say, 'Behold, I give to him My covenant of peace; and it shall be to him and his descendants after him a covenant of an everlasting priesthood, because he was zealous for his God, and made atonement for the children of Israel'" (Numbers 25:11-13). Phinehas is the Old Testament model of righteous anger in defense of God's holiness — not rashness, not cruelty, but covenantal zeal. Psalm 106:31 says "it was accounted to him for righteousness." Zeal without knowledge is dangerous; but knowledge without zeal is a dead orthodoxy. Phinehas had both, and God commended Him forever.