Korah - Numbers 16

Just to review, it’s not even been two years since the Israelites have left slavery in Egypt and there have already been numerous rebellions including the making of the golden calf, the people complaining about manna not being good enough, the foreigners rebelling in chapter 11, Aaron and Miriam, and then they just got finished with the huge rebellion in which the people refused to go take the Promised Land and got barred from there for life, then went to war to fight it against God’s will and part of their army was destroyed. So it’s been a very long couple of years of fighting, rebellion, death, and destruction, and it is not going to get better any time soon.

There was a man named Korah who was a Levite but not a priest and he convinced 250 of Israel’s high leadership to “gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron, and said unto them, Ye take too much upon you, seeing all the congregation are holy, every one of them.” They told Moses that the rest of Israel is just as holy as Moses and Aaron and therefore Korah should be their leader. What’s interesting to me is that these guys didn’t say “Moses your job is so hard and you are crushed by responsibility to these people, how can I help ease your burden?” They said “give me your job, I’ll be better at it and I deserve it more.” That’s tough considering that the people are all being hand fed by God, so how do they think they would be able to keep that up? And I’m sure that Moses and Aaron didn’t get bigger, nicer tents or more food than anyone else, so this begs the question, just exactly did these guys think that they were going to get that was so much better than what they already had?

Moses fell on his face because he knew what was coming, he knew that God was going to be mad but his response was interesting and not one that I think I’d come up with on the fly, Moses told them that the next day to bring their fire pans to the tabernacle to offer incense to the Lord and “it shall be that the man whom the Lord doth choose, the shall be holy.” The rule was that only designated priests could offer the incense to God, so offering it by someone who was not authorized is forbidden, so Moses says “ok you want to be in charge, you come offer the incense and we’ll see who’s offering God accepts.” Pretty clever, there’s no arguing back and forth, there’s no ego or power contests, it’s just like “ok let’s see who God chooses,” very clever.

There’s Korah who wants Moses’ job and then there were two other men named Dathan and Abiram who wanted Aaron’s job, and when Moses told all those who were challenging them to bring their fire pans to the tabernacle the next day, these two guys wouldn’t come. TB says it was their way of saying that they didn’t recognize Moses’ authority. So Moses went to Dathan and Abiram’s tents and told them “if you die of natural causes like regular people, then you will know that I was not called of God, but if God opens up the earth and swallows you whole, then you will know that I am called of God.” And guess what happens? Right at that moment, the earth opened up and swallowed not only Dathan and Abiram whole right then and there, but their families as well and their tents and everything that they owned, as well as “all the men that appertained unto Korah and all their goods.” They must have lived in the same area and the earth swallowed up that whole section and all their tents, belongings and families. The people watching this whole thing got scared and ran away.

Back at the tabernacle where the rest of the 250 rebellious men were gathered together with their faire pans to offer incense to see who God picked, they were waiting, “and there came out a fire from the Lord, and consumed the two hundred and fifty men that offered incense.” Moses tells Aaron’s son Eleazar to pick up all those fire pans, melt them down, and make a plate to cover the altar, I assume this is some kind of lid, and that was put into the temple equipment for the rest of the time. This was done “to be a memorial unto the children of Israel, that no stranger, which is not of the seed of Aaron come near to offer incense before the Lord.”

Astonishingly, the next day “all the congregation of theic hidlren of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron, saying, Ye have killed the people of the Lord.” The cloud of the Lord covered the tabernacle “and the flory of the Lord appeared” and told Moses and Aaron to get away from the people because he’s going to kill them all right then. I feel like at this point, that’s fair, especially when we consider this in the eternal perspective Everyone dies, this life is not the end, it’s possible that that people were not going to be able to progress any further while in mortality beyond just corrupting the next generation. Moses tells Aaron to get a censer of incense and make an offering to God to appease Him, because the plague had already started. Aaron goes and gets the censer and stands between those already dead of the plague and those still alive, waving the incense, and God stopped the plague. In just that little bit of time, almost 15,000 people had been killed by this plague. TB suggests that because the counting is only eve done of men, that including women and children, it was probably closer to 50,000 people who had died. Now I don’t think that it’s fair that the women and children had to die because these men were idiots, but maybe it was a family thing, maybe they all felt this same way, and maybe I have to just consider the eternal perspective.