Our sedra is best known for its charming account of Balaam the bumbling prophet, whose talking donkey knows more than he does and who cannot open his mouth without saying something he does not mean. But readers of Shakespearean tragedy know comic relief when they see it. The surrounding sedras are awash in blood. Balaam is the clown who elicits our laughter when the larger story becomes too much to take.

That larger story stopped for breath with the end of last week's sedra, in which Israel utterly annihilates two enemy nations, men, women, and children, until "no remnant was left." As the horror of it all sinks in, we get to laugh at Balaam. But when Balaam departs, we return to slaughter, this time within the Israelite camp itself, when the zealot Pinhas sees his neighbor Zimri bringing home a non-Jewish date and murders them both in cold blood.

Well, we say, the two nations were enemies, weren't they? And Zimri was flirting not just with a Midianite woman but with the idolatry she practiced. We are left to imagine that they all got what was coming to them; even God seems to concur.

But if so, God may have had second thoughts. That, say our commentators, is why the story of Pinhas is broken up — his zealotry here, and his reward next week. It took some time to think it through, but in the end, the same God who directs Israel's fortunes in bloody battle, and who draws so firm a line in the sand that God's followers become murderers, has a change of heart. Next week, God rewards Pinhas with an "everlasting covenant, a covenant of peace" (brit shalom).

"Peace," mind you. With fine irony, God grants this quintessential zealot with a sword a legacy of peace. The midrash reminds us: "When you encounter someone, you say, shalom, 'peace'; our Friday night Sh'ma ends with a blessing praising God for a 'tabernacle of peace.' The Amida ends with the blessing of peace. The priestly benediction prays for peace." The Birkat Hamazon (Grace after Meals), too, ends with peace and not just once (notes Rashi) but twice, since "without peace you have nothing."

To be sure, only a fool thinks that platitudes of peace can eliminate war. Like it or not, the world does contain evil, and neither the Torah nor the rabbis teach unreserved pacifism. Yes, Isaiah knows we should "beat swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks," but the prophet Joel, more realistically perhaps, says just the opposite: Sometimes we have to "beat ploughshares into swords and pruning hooks into spears." The point is, we should not enjoy doing it. Otherwise we create zealots, and that is what Judaism abhors. The Yerushalmi states clearly that "Pinhas did not act in accord with the sages," to which Itturei Torah adds, "It is always necessary to see what motivates zealotry."

So God does reward Pinhas but with the promise that his descendants will eventually understand that when war against evil has to be fought, it should be conducted only in a measured way, always with regard to law, and never in self-righteousness.

It would take human beings centuries for the lessons of the covenant of peace to sink in. Pinhas fathered the Zadokite priesthood — in Hebrew, B'nei Tzadok, a derivative of the word tzedek, which originally meant justice to the point of zealotry: the way the Israelites slaughtered everyone and why Pinhas murdered Zimri and his girl friend.

But more than two millennia later, we encounter a modern form of B'nei Tzadok: the hasidic tzadikim. By then, the original meaning of the word had evolved. Tzadikim led their followers precisely by preaching God's infinite mercy. And eventually, we get the legend of the lamedvavniks, the 36 righteous tzadikim who sustain the world with compassion and goodness. When we apply the word tzadik to people, we hardly mean they are likely to commit murder, if necessary, for the sake of cold-hearted justice.

Midrash Rabba, as if out of nowhere, proclaims, "Pinhas is still alive." Yes, we still have zealots among us, people who abandon reason, break the law, and ignore all moral constraints in vigilante advocacy of "the good." But we also have the legacy of Pinhas: an eternal covenant of peace in-the-making. If we cannot yet convert swords into ploughshares, we can at least support the transformation of the rude form of justice inherited by Pinhas' B'nei Tzadok into the penchant for compassion of the 36 tzadikim. And without being unreasonably saccharine by denying the need to enforce morals and sustain a military, we can deplore self-righteousness and zealotry of all kinds.