Pinchas publicly killed Zimri. Rashi writes that the Jewish people began to embarrass Pinchas. They questioned how a person whose maternal grandfather (Yisro) was an idolater could murder the leader of a tribe. Therefore, the Torah specifically emphasizes Pinchas’s paternal descent from Aharon.
The logic behind the Jews’ argument and Hashem’s response is difficult to grasp. If they knew the law that permitted Pinchas’s actions, why did they insult him? If they were unfamiliar with the law and viewed him as a cold-blooded murderer, of what benefit was it to point out his paternal lineage? In what way did it change the reality that one of his grandfathers served as a priest for idol worship and that in their minds, he had killed the leader of a tribe without justification?
Rav Meir Shapiro explains that the value of a mitzvah is measured by the degree to which its performance runs counter to a person’s natural inclinations and therefore represents a greater test of his devotion to Hashem. The Jews attempted to minimize the greatness of Pinchas’s actions not by insinuating that he was a cold-blooded killer, but by hinting that it had come easy to him because his grandfather cruelly killed animals as part of his idol worship.
The Torah therefore emphasizes that this act was performed with great personal difficulty and internal resistance. Pinchas’s instincts did not come from his allegedly merciless maternal grandfather, but from his paternal grandfather Aharon, a man whose entire life was dedicated to the pursuit of peace. The Lekach Tov derives from this explanation the importance of adapting ourselves to the Torah and not attempting to interpret the Torah’s laws in light of our personal preferences, a lesson illustrated by the following story.
A person once remarked to Rav Yitzchok Hutner that the performance of certain mitzvos is too difficult for him since they run counter to his nature and he is unable to change. Rav Hutner responded by likening the man’s argument to the case of a motorist speeding down the highway who suddenly sees flashing lights in his rear-view mirror. He pulls over, and the policeman approaches and asks why he was driving 83 mph on a highway with a speed limit of 50.
The man foolishly answers that he did nothing wrong, as the car was set to cruise control and he was not even the one driving at that speed. The officer dismisses his specious defense by noting that he was the one to initially set the cruise control to an illegal speed. Similarly, when a person comes before the Heavenly Court and attempts to justify his ways by noting that certain mitzvos ran counter to his very essence, he will have a difficult time explaining who was responsible for creating within himself a nature that runs counter to the Torah.
While every person has different mitzvos that specifically challenge him, the Mishnah in Avos teaches that the strong person is one who conquers his evil inclination (4:1) and that the harder a mitzvah is for a person, the greater will be his reward for doing it (Ibid., 5:22), a lesson we should learn from the eternal covenant of peace that Hashem gave to Pinchas for acting counter to his peaceful nature. (R’ Ozer Alport)
