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Now, through the act of Zimri at Shittim, Israel began to whore after the daughters of Moab; and they seized the Blessed Creator’s characteristic, the characteristic of love, and through this distanced themselves from Blessed [God] – whereas on the contrary, through this they could have drawn themselves closer. But they remained in contraction, a place where the Upper Love was contracted, and they drew it down to a place of the judgments and the contraction; and therefore the punishment, God save us, came upon them, wherein twenty-four thousand Israelites died. But Pinhas, on account of his holding onto the Omnipresent’s zealousness, upheld and established the characteristic of mercy [hesed], which the wicked had cast down; and therefore he deserved to be a priest. And that is [the meaning of] settled my wrath – from the idiom of settling the soul (Psalm 19:8), [meaning] that Pinhas settled [God’s] spirit, as if it were possible, as we have stated above, through the beloved child at whose hands the judgments are sweetened and absorbed into mercy. And therefore it shall be to him and to his descendants after him the covenant of a perpetual priesthood (Num 25:13), and therefore Pinhas only became a priest after he killed Zimri, for then he held onto and established the characteristic of mercy; and understand this, blessed is God forever, amen and amen.