Pinchas is rewarded with a covenant of peace, as if to remind zealots that peace is the goal, not the tool.
Pinchas acts decisively in a moment of communal collapse. The reward is striking: brit shalom, a covenant of peace. Tradition reads the letter vav in shalom as broken, peace given to a zealot is a fragile thing.
The parshah honors his courage and warns about his temperament in the same breath. Both readings are needed.
This week, if you feel righteous anger rising, hold it long enough to ask what peace would actually require.