day no. 15,323 continued... the plague was stayed

Numbers 25:7-9
When Phinehas the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose and left the congregation and took a spear in his hand and went after the man of Israel into the chamber and pierced both of them, the man of Israel and the woman through her belly. Thus the plague on the people of Israel was stopped. Nevertheless, those who died by the plague were twenty-four thousand.

Epidemics can evaporate. Plagues can be stayed.

In the days of Phinehas, a plague broke out in Israel as a result of their rampant immorality. Many were saddened by it and many participated in it, but only Phinehas stood up and did something directly about it. He confronted it by confronting the sin behind it.

Psalm 106:28-31
They joined themselves also unto Baal-peor,
and ate the sacrifices of the dead.
Thus they provoked him to anger with their inventions:
and the plague brake in upon them.
Then stood up Phinehas, and executed judgment:
and so the plague was stayed.
And that was counted unto him for righteousness
unto all generations for evermore.

A moral stand can prove more deadly to a disease than a medical break through. An advance in moral responsibility may be more helpful to a society than an advance in science... Phinehas stood up and the plague was stayed.


Not only does this highlight the moral component of sin and its attending consequences, but it also points out that plagues can, like a mist, be here one moment and gone the next. No disease can withstand the sovereign hand of God. In all our panic math, have we factored for that? A plague ravaged twenty-four thousand Israelites in a very short time and then in an instance, it was defeated. It did not continue to live on any surface in all Israel. The sick recovered. The disease died. 

May God grant us a Phinehas to atone for our sins by boldly confronting our sins and its consequences and may God in kind delete COVID from the face of the earth.