When you hear the word “Levite,” what image comes to your mind? Perhaps a robed man with a turban helping with a sacrifice in the temple? Or a holy man offering incense? You surely do not think of a warrior ready for battle.

When Moses came down from Mount Sinai and witnessed the idolatry in which the people were “running wild,” He commanded the Levites to strap on their swords and kill the people. The Levites rallied to the Lord’s side, and about 3,000 were killed that day.

At Balaam’s advice, the Moabite women began to seduce the Israelites, and God’s anger burned against those Israelites. Then Zimri, the son of Salu, the leader of a Simeonite family, had the audacity (and stupidity) to appear before Moses and all the people with Cozbi, the daughter of Zur, a tribal chief of a Midianite family. (Aren’t you glad that I did not ask you for those names?)

Because I was as zealous as the Lord was for His name, I took a spear and I chased them to their tent. I “drove the spear through both of them—through the Israelite and into the woman’s body. Then the plague against the Israelites was stopped . . . .”

Because of my killing of the breakers of the law, God made a covenant with me and my family, and since then we became priests of God. Who am I?

I live in a coastal village of some renown, for it is from my home town that Jonah fled toward Tarshish. I am a rather unusual figure in the Bible, for it says of me that I “was always doing good and helping the poor.” I made robes and other clothing for the widows. I became sick and died, and others washed me and laid me in an upstairs room. Peter came to me and said, “Gazelle, get up.” I got up, and many believed I was raised from the dead. Who am I?

Numbers 25

Acts 9:36–43