Numbers 25:10

Hebrew Bible

7 When Phinehas son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he got up from among the assembly, took a javelin in his hand, 8 and went after the Israelite man into the tent and thrust through the Israelite man and into the woman’s abdomen. So the plague was stopped from the Israelites. 9 Those that died in the plague were 24,000. 10 The Lord spoke to Moses: 11Phinehas son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, has turned my anger away from the Israelites, when he manifested such zeal for my sake among them, so that I did not consume the Israelites in my zeal. 12 Therefore, announce: ‘I am going to give to him my covenant of peace.

1 Maccabees 3:8

Deuterocanon

5 He searched out and pursued those who broke the law; he burned those who troubled his people. 6 Lawbreakers shrank back for fear of him; all the evildoers were confounded; and deliverance prospered by his hand. 7 He embittered many kings, but he made Jacob glad by his deeds, and his memory is blessed forever. 8 He went through the cities of Judah; he destroyed the ungodly out of the land; thus he turned away wrath from Israel. 9 He was renowned to the ends of the earth; he gathered in those who were perishing.

 Notes and References

"... Books like 1 Maccabees were written to celebrate the sons of Mattathias as “the family of those people through whom deliverance was given to Israel” (1 Maccabees 5:62), God’s chosen agents who rescued Israel from the ills that beset it. Two poetic passages are particularly important for the author’s interpretation of the role of this family in the plan of God, namely, the poem in praise of Judas in 1 Maccabees 3:3–9 and the encomium on Simon in 1 Maccabees 14:4–15. The author lauds Judas as “a lion in his deeds, a lion’s cub roaring for prey” (1 Maccabees 3:4), recalling Hosea’s description of God’s agent (Hosea 5:14) as well as Jacob’s description of Judah’s ancient namesake (Genesis 49:9). By cleansing Israel of apostate and lapsed Jews, Judas “turned away wrath from Israel” (1 Maccabees 3:8), words directly reminiscent of the important episode of Phinehas, whose similarly violent response to compromise won him the covenant of an eternal priesthood (Numbers 25:10–13; see also 1 Maccabees 2:23–26, 54). Judas emerges as a hero of biblical proportions striding onto the scene, entrusted with restoring and extending “the glory of his people” ..."

DeSilva, David A. The Jewish Teachers of Jesus, James, and Jude: What Earliest Christianity Learned from the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha (p. 143) Oxford University Press, 2012

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