Zimri ( Hebrew: זִמְרִי, ''Zīmrī''; ) son of Salu was the prince or leader of a family within the

Tribe of Simeon According to the Hebrew Bible, the Tribe of Simeon (; ''Šīm‘ōn'', "hearkening/listening/understanding/empathizing") was one of the twelve tribes of Israel. The Book of Joshua locates its territory inside the boundaries of the Tribe of Judah ...

during the time of the

Israelites Israelites were a Hebrew language, Hebrew-speaking ethnoreligious group, consisting of tribes that lived in Canaan during the Iron Age. Modern scholarship describes the Israelites as emerging from indigenous Canaanites, Canaanite populations ...

’ Exodus in the wilderness at the time when they were approaching the

Promised Land In the Abrahamic religions, the "Promised Land" ( ) refers to a swath of territory in the Levant that was bestowed upon Abraham and his descendants by God in Abrahamic religions, God. In the context of the Bible, these descendants are originally ...

. The

Book of Numbers The Book of Numbers (from Biblical Greek, Greek Ἀριθμοί, ''Arithmoi'', , ''Bəmīḏbar'', ; ) is the fourth book of the Hebrew Bible and the fourth of five books of the Jewish Torah. The book has a long and complex history; its final f ...

in the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' Abila or Shittim, he took part in the Heresy of Peor, taking as a paramour a

Midianite Midian (; ; , ''Madiam''; Taymanitic: 𐪃𐪕𐪚𐪌 ''MDYN''; ''Mīḏyān'') is a geographical region in West Asia, located in northwestern Saudi Arabia. mentioned in the Tanakh and Quran. William G. Dever states that biblical Midian was i ...

woman,

Cozbi Cozbi or Kozbi (, tr. ''Kozbī'') is mentioned in in the Hebrew Bible as " hedaughter of Zur", a prominent Midianite, and a wife or concubine of the Israelite Zimri, son of Salu. The Lord objected to the mixing of the Israelite people with the ...

(or Kozbi). For this sin,

Phinehas According to the Hebrew Bible, Phinehas (also spelled Phineas, ; , ''Phinees'', ) was a priest during the Exodus. The grandson of Aaron and son of Eleazar, the High Priests (), he distinguished himself as a youth at Shittim with his zeal again ...

, grandson of

Aaron According to the Old Testament of the Bible, Aaron ( or ) was an Israelite prophet, a high priest, and the elder brother of Moses. Information about Aaron comes exclusively from religious texts, such as the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament ...

, killed them both by impaling them on a spear as they had sex (). The incident was then taken by the Israelites as a pretext for the War against the Midianites in

Numbers 31 Numbers 31 is the 31st chapter of the Book of Numbers, the fourth book of the Pentateuch (Torah), the central part of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), a sacred text in Judaism and Christianity. Scholars such as Israel Knohl and Dennis T. Olso ...

Interpretations

Judaism

Since many of the sinners were from the tribe of Shimon, the tribesmen came to Zimri, who was one of the leaders of the tribe, and demanded that he do something that would save them. Zimri decided that prostitution with a non-Jew was not punishable by death, and cited evidence of Moses' marriage with Jethro's daughter, even though she had converted to Judaism before her marriage with him. In order to substantiate this ruling, he decided to prostitute with

, the daughter of Zur, the king of Midian, and to publicize this deed. He came to her and asked her to cooperate with him. She told him that since she was the daughter of a king and exalted from a nation, her father would not allow her to prostitute with anyone, but only with the greatest of the people of Israel, Moses. Zimri told her that he was more important than Moses, since Moses was the leader of the third tribe, the tribe of Levi, while he himself was the leader of the tribe of Shimon, the second tribe. Cozbi agreed to cooperate, and Zimri grabbed her in Belorita and brought her to Moshe, where he defied him and asked if Cozbi was allowed to do so, since she was just like Moshe's wife, Tzipora, who was also a Midianite. When the people saw Zimri's act of provocation, they all wept. The

Babylonian Talmud The Talmud (; ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the centerpiece of Jewi ...

asserts that Zimri and Cozbi engaged in 424 acts of coitus in their public encounter before Phinehas zealously killed them. The meaning of that exact number of coituses in their multi-coital encounter and whether or not that figure was meant to be taken literally has been debated by scholars. According to a

midrash ''Midrash'' (;"midrash"
. ''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. ; or ''midrashot' ...

(

Tanhuma Midrash Tanhuma (), also known as Yelammedenu, is the name given to a homiletic midrash on the entire Torah, and it is known in several different versions or collections. Tanhuma bar Abba is not the author of the text but instead is a figure to w ...

Pinha
2.1

Sanhedrin The Sanhedrin (Hebrew and Middle Aramaic , a loanword from , 'assembly,' 'sitting together,' hence ' assembly' or 'council') was a Jewish legislative and judicial assembly of either 23 or 70 elders, existing at both a local and central level i ...

82b), Zimri was the same person as Shelumiel son of Zurishaddai.

Islam

Islam Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...

, Zimri appears under the name as-Sāmirī (الـسّٰامِرِي). Islam also assigns to him a major role in the earlier affair of the

Golden Calf According to the Torah, the Bible, and the Quran, the golden calf () was a cult image made by the Israelites when Moses went up to Mount Sinai (bible), Mount Sinai. In Hebrew, the incident is known as "the sin of the calf" (). It is first mentio ...

, which is not attested in the Bible, although this is only ''one'' of several theories for the man’s identity. The Islamic account attributes to Zimri/Samiri many of the actions which the Hebrew Bible assigns to

- thus exonerating the latter, Islam's prophet

Harun Harun (, ), also transliterated as Haroon or Haroun or Hamroun, is a common male given name of Arabic origin, related to the Hebrew name of the Prophet Aaron. Both are most likely of Egyptian origin, from '' ꜥḥꜣ rw'', meaning "warrior lion". ...

, from involvement in the sinful worship of the Calf.

Christianity

According to the ''Revelations of Saint Bridget'', after his death, Zimri's soul was condemned to hell (Book 7, Chapter 19).

Later influence

In the

deutero-canonical The deuterocanonical books, meaning 'of, pertaining to, or constituting a second canon', collectively known as the Deuterocanon (DC), are certain books and passages considered to be canonical books of the Old Testament by the Catholic Churc ...

First Book of Maccabees 1 Maccabees, also known as the First Book of Maccabees, First Maccabees, and abbreviated as 1 Macc., is a deuterocanonical book which details the history of the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire as well as the founding and earliest his ...

, the zeal of

Mattathias Mattathias ben Johanan (, ''Mattīṯyāhū haKōhēn ben Yōḥānān''; died 166–165 BCE) was a Kohen (Jewish priest) who helped spark the Maccabean Revolt against the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire. Mattathias's story is related in the deuter ...

, leader of the

Maccabean revolt The Maccabean Revolt () was a Jewish rebellion led by the Maccabees against the Seleucid Empire and against Hellenistic influence on Jewish life. The main phase of the revolt lasted from 167 to 160 BCE and ended with the Seleucids in control of ...

, is said to be inspired by the zeal shown by Phinehas: The Phineas Priests, a modern-day U.S. terrorist movement, believe the story of Phinehas and Zimri provides a divine mandate for committing atrocities against mixed-race couples; despite (argues Rees 2013) the previous divine rebuke of

Miriam Miriam (, lit. ‘rebellion’) is described in the Hebrew Bible as the daughter of Amram and Jochebed, and the older sister of Moses and Aaron. She was a prophetess and first appears in the Book of Exodus. The Torah refers to her as "Miria ...

in , for criticising

Moses In Abrahamic religions, Moses was the Hebrews, Hebrew prophet who led the Israelites out of slavery in the The Exodus, Exodus from ancient Egypt, Egypt. He is considered the most important Prophets in Judaism, prophet in Judaism and Samaritani ...

for marrying a “ Cushite woman,” which confounds this reading.Anthony Rees
(Re)Reading Again: A Mosaic Reading of Numbers 25
(2013 dissertation), pp. 126–130, citing T.K. Beal, "The White Supremacist Bible and the Phineas Priesthood." In: Jonneke Bekkenkamp and Yvonne Sherwood, (eds.), ''Sanctified Aggression: Legacies of Biblical and Post Biblical Vocabularies of Violence'' (2003), pp. 120–131.

Notes

References

{{Reflist Book of Numbers people Tribe of Simeon Biblical murder victims Deaths by stabbing Golden calf Interfaith marriage