By Rabbi Moshe Pogrow
One day, there will be perfect peace across the whole earth, between each other and with Hashem. This is an absolute promise of Hashem, a bris that will come to pass. Hashem aims to bring about the realization of His promise, and the world can rest assured that ultimately it will be realized.
However, the realization of that harmony will come through the spirit and activism that passive people—who claim that their neglect of duty is merely a “love of peace”—often condemn as “disturbances of the peace.” Peace is a precious thing for which one is obligated to sacrifice everything, all of one’s own rights and possessions, but one may never sacrifice the rights of others for it, and one may never sacrifice what Hashem has declared to be true to earn it. There can be true peace among people only if they are all at peace with Hashem. One who dares to fight against the enemies of what is good and true in the eyes of Hashem is, by definition, a fighter for the bris shalom on earth.
Conversely, a passive person who gives up without protest for the sake of what he imagines to be peace with his fellow men, and allows them to stir up strife with Hashem—through his very love of peace, he makes common cause with the enemies of the bris shalom on earth. What saved the people after the sin of Baal Peor was not the apathy of the masses, nor even the tears of sorrow shed by those who stood idly at the entrance to the ohel moed. It was the brave, seemingly unpeaceful actions of Pinchas that saved the people, restoring the basis for true peace.
And in response to his kana’us, Hashem rewards Pinchas with a bris shalom. When Pinchas was born, his father Elazar had not yet been made a kohen, so he had not inherited the title that his first cousins had. But just as shevet Levi attained a special status through its actions during cheit ha’eigel, Pinchas acquired kehuna here; he carried out in practice the symbolic atonement of the avodah. We are told that every subsequent kohen gadol was a descendant of Pinchas.
Pinchas himself was granted a very long life. As late as the incident of pilegesh b’Givah in the time of the shoftim, we find Pinchas ben Elazar ben Aharon serving as a kohen gadol. According to one opinion, Pinchas is Eliyahu Hanavi, who in the future will bring about the true bris shalom on earth.
Based on the commentary of Rav Shamshon Raphael Hirsch zt”l on Chumash, with permission from the publisher.
