By Rabbi Nuriel Zargari:
At the end of last week’s prasha Klal Yisrael became attracted to the avodah Zarah of Baal Peor, and to the gentile women of Moav. Zimri the Nassi of Shevet Shimon sees what’s going on and goes and takes Kozbi the daughter of the king Tsur. When Pinchas sees this act of Zimri in public, he gets up and kills Zimri and Kozbi. But what was Zimri thinking for doing such a thing? Surely he knew she was forbidden. And besides, Chazal tell us that Zimri was 200 years old at the time. As the head of his Shevet, he was obviously a very learned man. So why did he do such a terrible act by taking a non-Jewish girl?
Harav Yosef Chaim Zonenfeld Zts”l explains that Zimri had good intentions. He looked at the situation and saw that the Moavites got Klal Yisrael to do two sins: idol worship and גילוי ערי. Zimri thought to himself if they go over there and worship avodah Zara and then do znut it will be worse. Better that we should bring the Moavi women here so they will only be guilty of one sin, and we would be saving them from Avodah Zara. At least they would still be part of Klal Yisrael and still believe in Hashem. Also Zimri reasoned that maybe we can be mekarev these ladies to join the Jewish people.
However, we see that Pinchas jumped in and declared that we must keep the Jewish camp holy and pure. It’s better for some Jews to do two sins but we keep our holiness and purity inside the Jewish camp, rather than do something the Torah forbids and try to justify it. The Torah speaks out in Pinchas’ defense that he acted for the sake of heaven with only pure intentions. The lesson is clear: we can’t make justifications to permit what the Torah forbids.