Korah’s Rebellion

Two hundred and fifty men stand in a line at the door of the holy tent. Each one holds a bronze pan of glowing coals and sweet incense. Each one is sure he is right. Before the day is over, the whole camp will know whom God has chosen.

Israel is camped in the wilderness. They have been rescued from Egypt, fed with manna, given God’s law. But the journey is long, and tempers are short. A man named Korah gathers a crowd. Korah is a Levite, and actually a cousin of Moses and Aaron. With him are Dathan and Abiram from the tribe of Reuben, and two hundred and fifty well-known leaders of the people. They march up to Moses and Aaron. “You’ve gone too far,” Korah says. “The whole community is holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them. So why do you set yourselves above the Lord’s people?”

Moses falls on his face. Then he gets up and answers. “Tomorrow morning the Lord will show who belongs to him. Bring your censers. Put fire and incense in them, and stand before the Lord. The one he chooses is the one who is holy.” Then he turns to Korah. “You’re the ones who have gone too far, you sons of Levi! Isn’t it enough that God chose you to serve at his tent? Now you want the priesthood too? It isn’t Aaron you’re grumbling against. It’s the Lord.” Moses sends for Dathan and Abiram. They refuse to come. “You brought us out of a land flowing with milk and honey,” they say, meaning Egypt, the land where they were slaves, “to kill us in the wilderness. And now you want to lord it over us too.” Moses is very angry. “Lord,” he prays, “don’t accept their offering. I haven’t taken so much as one donkey from them.”

Morning comes. The two hundred and fifty men stand at the entrance of the tent with their censers smoking, and Korah has gathered the whole crowd behind them. Then the glory of the Lord appears. God tells Moses and Aaron to step away from the people. But the two brothers fall on their faces and plead. “O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, shall one man sin, and will you be angry with the whole congregation?” And God listens. “Tell the people to move away from the tents of Korah, Dathan and Abiram.” Moses walks over, and the elders follow him. Families gather up their children and back away. Dathan and Abiram come out and stand at the doors of their tents, arms folded. Moses speaks so everyone can hear. “This is how you will know that the Lord sent me, and that I didn’t do these things on my own. If these men die an ordinary death, the Lord has not sent me. But if the Lord does something new, and the ground opens up…”

He has hardly finished speaking when the ground splits apart. The earth opens its mouth and swallows them, with their households and their tents and everything that belonged to them. They go down alive into the pit, the earth closes over them, and they are gone. All around, people run, crying out, afraid the ground will take them too. And fire comes out from the Lord and burns up the two hundred and fifty men who were offering the incense. Afterwards, God tells Aaron’s son Eleazar to gather up the bronze censers and hammer them into thin plates to cover the altar. Every time the people see that bronze, they will remember. Only Aaron’s family was called to offer incense before the Lord.

You might think that would be the end of the grumbling. It isn’t. The very next day the people complain again. “You have killed the Lord’s people!” And a deadly sickness begins to spread through the camp. Moses turns to his brother. “Quick! Take your censer, put fire and incense in it, and go. Make atonement for them.” And Aaron runs. He runs right into the middle of the crowd, the same crowd that had been shouting against him, and he stands there with his incense rising, between the dead and the living. And the plague stops. The priest they rejected is the one who saved them.

Korah was no outsider. He came from the Levite clan of Kohath, the very family trusted to carry the ark, the table and the golden lampstand whenever the camp moved. His complaint was not that he had no place. It was that he wanted a higher one. And there is a surprising footnote. Later in Numbers we read that the sons of Korah did not die. Generations on, their descendants served as singers in God’s house, and their name stands at the head of several psalms, including Psalm 84. One of its lines reads, “I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.”

Korah’s rebellion is told in Numbers, chapter sixteen. Korah wanted a bigger place. Aaron, the man he despised, ran into danger to save the very people who had turned on him. So here’s a question to carry with you. Where are you tempted to want someone else’s place, instead of being faithful in your own?