Then Phinees stood up, and pacified him: and the slaughter ceased.

“Tell me this. Will you still dare to call Jesus an imposter and lawbreaker? Will you not instead go off and bury yourselves somewhere, when you look the facts in the face, since their truth is so obvious? If Jesus were an imposter and lawbreaker, as you say he was, you should have been held in high honor for putting him to death. Phinehas killed a man and put an end to all God's wrath against the people. The psalmist said, "Then Phinehas stood up and propitiated him, and the slaughter stopped." He rescued a great many ungodly people from the wrath of God by slaying a single lawbreaker. This should have happened all the more in your case, if indeed the man you crucified was a transgressor of the law.”

“"Then stood up Phineas, and appeased Him, and the shaking ceased" [Psalm 106:30]. He has related the whole briefly, because he is not here teaching the ignorant, but reminding those who know the history. The word "shaking" here is the same as "breaking" before. For it is one word in the Greek. Lastly, so great was their wickedness, in being consecrated to the idol, and eating the sacrifices of the dead (that is, because the Gentiles sacrificed to dead men as to God), that God would not be otherwise appeased than as Phineas the Priest appeased Him, when he slew a man and a woman together whom he found in adultery. [Numbers 25:8] If he had done this from hatred towards them, and not from love, while zeal for the house of God devoured him, it would not have been counted unto him for righteousness....Christ our Lord indeed, when the New Testament was revealed, chose a milder discipline; but the threat of hell is more severe, and this we do not read of in those threatenings held out by God in His temporal government.”

“Then stood up Phinehas, and executed judgment,.... When none else would, he rose up in great zeal for the Lord of hosts; and took on him the work of a civil magistrate, and slew two persons of noble birth in the very act of fornication. The Targum is, "he prayed'' and so the Syriac version "he interceded with the Lord, that the plague might stop.'' This he might do, as well as the other, though it is not elsewhere recorded, and in which he succeeded: but in the Talmud (y) it is observed that it is not said (that is, "he prayed"), but from whence may be learned, if it is proper to say so, that he executed judgments with his Maker. The Septuagint and Vulgate Latin versions render it, "he appeased"; made atonement for propitiation; and this is said of him, Num 25:13. And so the plague was stayed; it was restrained from proceeding further; no more execution was done by it. In this he was a type of Christ, who, by doing righteousness, by the atoning sacrifice of himself, and by his intercession, has appeased the wrath of God, and satisfied divine justice so that there is no condemnation to them that are interested in him; no evil of punishment shall befall them, nor plague come nigh them. (y) T. Bab. Sanhedrin, fol. 82. 2.”