The Contested Priest Stands Between Death and Life

“Took men” is literally “Korah took”, with no object, and the KJV supplies “men”; some read it as “Korah took it upon himself”. Izhar was Amram’s brother (Exodus 6:18), so Korah was a first cousin of Moses and Aaron.

“Famous in the congregation” is literally “called ones of the assembly”, men summoned to council, close to the title given the tribal leaders in 1:16. “Men of renown” is anshey shem, “men of name”, the phrase Genesis 6:4 uses for the mighty men of old.

“Ye take too much upon you” is two words, rav lakhem, “enough of you” or “too much for you”. The claim that all are holy has an echo only a few verses back: 15:40 had just commanded Israel to “be holy unto your God”.

Moses falls on his face before he says a word. No audience is given for the gesture; it comes between the charge and the answer, and the answer is not his own verdict but a test.

“To morrow” is literally “morning”, boqer: the test is set for daybreak, with a night between. Moses answers in the vocabulary of priesthood: who are “his”, who is “holy”, and whom he will cause to “come near”, qarav, the verb of priestly approach.

“This do” is abrupt, two words in Hebrew. The censers are machtot, flat fire pans for carrying live coals, not the swinging censers of later worship; each man is to bring his own.

Moses throws their slogan back at them: “ye take too much upon you, ye sons of Levi.” The man the LORD chooses “shall be holy”, holiness as something conferred by choice, where verse 3 had claimed it by right for everyone.

“Hear, I pray you” is shimu na. Addressing Korah as “ye sons of Levi” widens the charge: he is spoken to as the head of a Levite faction, not as one man with a grievance.

“Seemeth it but a small thing” is literally “is it too little for you”, the phrase Dathan and Abiram hurl back in verse 13. The verse gathers the Levites’ charter from 3:6–8 and 8:14–19: separated, brought near, set to serve the tent and stand before the people.

The sentence turns on gam, “also”. The Levites had been “wholly given” to Aaron to serve him (3:9); Korah now asks for Aaron’s place as well as his own.

“Gathered together against the LORD” is noadim, the word of 14:35, “gathered together against me”. “What is Aaron” echoes Moses and Aaron in Exodus 16:7: “what are we, that ye murmur against us?” The complaint passes through the priest to God.

“Come up” is alah, the verb used for going up to a court or a superior, and the verb of going up into the land that the people had refused in 13:31. The refusal is spoken before the charge, and again at the end of verse 14.

“Is it a small thing” answers verse 9 with the same Hebrew. “Make thyself altogether a prince” doubles a verb from sar, prince, the word of Exodus 2:14, where a Hebrew in Egypt first said to Moses, “Who made thee a prince and a judge over us?”

“Put out the eyes” is literally “bore out the eyes”, what was done to captives such as Samson (Judges 16:21) and Zedekiah (2 Kings 25:7), or else an idiom for blinding people to the facts. “These men” may be the speakers themselves, avoiding the words “our eyes”.

“Respect not thou their offering” uses the verb shaah of Genesis 4:4–5, where the LORD “had respect” to Abel’s offering and not Cain’s. “One ass” anticipates Samuel’s farewell in 1 Samuel 12:3: “whose ass have I taken?”

Moses names three parties in one breath, “thou, and they, and Aaron”, and Aaron comes last, one claimant among the rest. The test is to happen in the open, “before the LORD”, with the appointed priest on the same footing as his challengers.

The number is given exactly, two hundred and fifty, and then Korah and Aaron each with his own pan: two hundred and fifty-two pans of fire at the door of the tent. The repeated “every man his censer” makes each one individually answerable.

The rivals stand “with Moses and Aaron” at the same threshold, holding identical vessels. When Deuteronomy 11:6 recalls this day it names only Dathan and Abiram, and Psalm 106:17 does the same.

“Gathered” is the verb of assembly, qahal, the verb used in Exodus 32:1 when the people gathered to Aaron to demand the calf. The glory appears “unto all the congregation”: the whole people, not only the contestants, see it.

The LORD speaks to Moses and Aaron together, while Aaron still stands with his censer as one of the two hundred and fifty-two. The appointed priest is addressed before any sign has vindicated him.

“In a moment” is kerega, an instant, the blink of an eye. “Separate yourselves” is hibbadlu, the verb of Genesis 1:4, where God “divided the light from the darkness”. The offer of 14:12 returns, now with Aaron included in the call to stand apart.

“The God of the spirits of all flesh” is a title found only here and in 27:16, where Moses uses it again to ask for a leader to follow him. The title appeals to God as the one who gives every life breath and so knows each one apart.

A shorter speech, to Moses alone. The LORD does not answer the question of verse 22 in words; the next command answers it by opening a way out.

“Tabernacle” here is mishkan, the word usually kept for the LORD’s own dwelling, used of Korah’s tent: a rival dwelling in the camp. “Get you up” means move away, withdraw from its surroundings.

Moses rises from his face and goes himself to the men who would not come to him in verse 12. The elders who follow are presumably the seventy of chapter 11, now at his side as witnesses.

“Wicked” is reshaim, the guilty party in a lawsuit: “these guilty men”. “Touch nothing of theirs” treats their goods as contagious, as the devoted things of Jericho were, which Achan took to his cost (Joshua 7:1).

Only Dathan and Abiram come out to their tent doors; Korah is not said to be there. Whether he died in the earth or in the fire is not stated, and readers have disagreed, since 26:10 speaks of the earth swallowing him together with the fire.

“Of mine own mind” is literally “from my own heart”, answering the charge of verse 13 that he acted to make himself a prince. “All these works” takes in his whole leadership since Egypt, not only this day.

“The common death of all men” and “the visitation of all men” are two phrases for dying as anyone dies and meeting the fate appointed to every life. Moses stakes his commission on the one outcome that could not happen by ordinary means.

“Make a new thing” is literally “create a creation”, yivra beriah, with bara, the verb of Genesis 1:1, which the Old Testament uses of God alone. “The pit” is Sheol, the realm of the dead, here to be entered living.

“Clave asunder” is baqa, the verb of Exodus 14:21, where “the waters were divided” at the sea. The timing is exact: the ground splits as he finishes speaking.

“The earth opened her mouth” recalls Genesis 4:11, where the ground “opened her mouth” to receive Abel’s blood. “Their houses” means households, bayit, the families and all they had.

Psalm 55:15 uses this event as a curse on enemies: “let them go down quick into hell.” “Perished from among the congregation” is avad, lost from the community’s number, removed from the count.

“At the cry of them” is literally “at their voice”, the sound of the swallowed or of the ground itself. The fear is plain and physical: people run from the edge of a pit still open in their camp.

The words echo Leviticus 10:2, where “there went out fire from the LORD, and devoured” Nadab and Abihu for offering strange fire. The two hundred and fifty die with incense in their hands, as Aaron’s two sons did.

The Hebrew Bible begins chapter 17 here; the KJV follows the Greek and Latin in running chapter 16 on to fifty verses. So 16:36–50 in English Bibles is 17:1–15 in Hebrew, and the Hebrew chapter 17 ends at verse 28.

“Scatter thou the fire yonder” means fling the coals far off, not onto the altar. Eleazar does the work rather than Aaron, since the high priest must not come near the dead (Leviticus 21:11).

“Sinners against their own souls” means they sinned at the cost of their lives. “Broad plates” are beaten sheets, plating for the bronze altar of Exodus 27:1–2. “A sign” is ot, the word used for the rainbow in Genesis 9:13.

“Brasen” means bronze: the pans were bronze, and so was the altar they now cover (Exodus 27:2). “They that were burnt” is all the verse calls the dead; they are not named again.

“Stranger” here is zar, an outsider to the priesthood, not the ger, the resident foreigner, of chapter 15. In this sense a Levite of Kohath could be a zar at the incense altar. “As the LORD said to him” most likely refers to Eleazar, told through Moses.

“The people of the LORD” is am YHWH, the phrase Moses used in 11:29: “would God that all the LORD’s people were prophets!” The murmuring is lun, the verb of 14:2, back on the very next morning.

The crowd turns toward the tent and sees the cloud cover it, as it first covered the tabernacle on the day it was raised (9:15). The appearance interrupts the gathering before it can act.

Moses and Aaron move toward the tent, “before” it, while the crowd moves against them. The two brothers go to the place of the glory, the only refuge the chapter offers them.

The LORD speaks to Moses alone, though the command in the next verse is plural and takes in Aaron. It is the last divine speech of the chapter.

“Get you up” is heromu, “lift yourselves away”, a different verb from the “separate” of verse 21, and “as in a moment” repeats that verse. The brothers fall on their faces a second time in two days.

“Wrath” is qetsef, anger breaking out, pictured as having “gone out” like a messenger. Incense was burned on the golden altar inside the holy place; here it is carried out into the camp, among the people.

By the reckoning of 33:39, which makes Aaron 123 at his death in the fortieth year, he was now in his eighties, and he runs. He goes “into the midst”, the centre of the crowd that had accused him.

“Stayed” is atsar, held back or restrained, the verb used of the plague at Baal-peor in 25:8 and of David’s plague in 2 Samuel 24:25. The priest with a censer becomes a line the plague cannot cross.

Fourteen thousand seven hundred, counted apart from Korah’s company. With the two hundred and fifty and the households, the dead of these two days far outnumber the three thousand who fell after the calf (Exodus 32:28).

Aaron returns to the door of the tent, where the censer test began in verse 18. “The plague was stayed” is repeated from verse 48 as the chapter’s last words.