Pinchas

God declares Pinchas' zeal to have turned back His wrath, and gives him a covenant of peace — a covenant of perpetual priesthood for him and his offspring. The Midianites are marked for hostilities for their part in Peor. Then, with the plague past and the land ahead, a new census of the new generation: every tribe counted by clans, 601,730 men twenty and upward, with the Levites counted separately at 23,000. The land will be apportioned among these by lot, larger holdings to larger tribes — and of all counted at Sinai thirty-eight years before, none remains except Caleb and Joshua, as was spoken.

The five daughters of Zelophehad — Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah — come forward: their father died in the wilderness for his own sin, leaving no son. "Why should our father's name be withdrawn from his clan?" Moses brings their case before the LORD, who answers: the daughters speak rightly — give them their father's inheritance; and the order of inheritance is fixed for all Israel. Moses is then told to ascend the mountain of Avarim and see the land he will not enter, because of the waters of Meribah. He asks that the congregation not be left as sheep without a shepherd, and Joshua son of Nun, a man in whom is spirit, is commissioned before Eleazar and all the congregation, Moses' hands laid on him.

The portion closes with the public offering calendar in full: the daily tamid, two lambs morning and twilight; the Sabbath's addition; the new moon's; then each appointed time — Pesach and the seven days of unleavened bread, the day of firstfruits at Shavuot, the day of horn-blasting in the seventh month, Yom Kippur, and the seven days of Sukkot with its bulls declining from thirteen to seven, closing with the eighth-day assembly, Shemini Atzeret — each with its prescribed bulls, rams, lambs, grain, drink offerings, and goat.