⁷ When Eleazar’s son Phinehas, grandson of Aaron the priest saw this, he jumped up from the middle of the community, grabbed a javelin in his hand, ⁸ followed the Israeli man inside his tent,^[a] and impaled the two of them—the Israeli man and the woman—right through both of them and into her abdomen. Then the plague infecting the Israelis was brought to a halt. Nevertheless, ⁹ 24,000 people died because of the plague.

God Commends Phinehas

¹⁰ The Lord told Moses, ¹¹ “Eleazar’s son Phinehas, grandson of Aaron the priest, has turned my wrath away from Israel. Because his zealousness reflected my own zeal for them, I didn’t consume Israel in my jealousy. ¹² Therefore, I’m certainly going to be giving him my covenant of peace, ¹³ for him and for his descendants after him, too, a covenant of perpetual priesthood, because he was zealous for his God and made atonement for the Israelis.”

¹⁴ Now the name of the Israeli man who was slain, along with the Midianite woman, was Salu’s son Zimri, a leader from the tribe of Simeon. ¹⁵ The woman who was slain, that is, the Midianite woman, was named Cozbi. She was the daughter of Zur, a leader^[b] of one of the ancestral houses of Midian.