Numbers16chapter 16

Numbers 16:1-2

Korah is a Kohathite and Dathan and Abiram are Reubenites, and the two families camped on the same side of the tabernacle, Kohath at 3:29 and Reuben at 2:10, which Matthew Henry reads as how the one drew in the other. Albert Barnes finds the grievance in 3:30, where Elizaphan of the youngest Kohathite branch was made chief over the families of Kohath. The two hundred and fifty who rise with them are called men of renown, a phrase the King James Old Testament uses in one other place, Genesis 6:4.

Numbers 16:3

The premise is Exodus 19:6, a kingdom of priests and an holy nation, and it is true. What Korah builds on it is that the priesthood therefore stands open to any Israelite, and the rest of the chapter answers the inference rather than the premise. This is the one place in the Torah where a rebellion argues from Scripture, and Moses hands the same accusation back at the end of verse 7, ye take too much upon you, ye sons of Levi.

Numbers 16:4-5

Moses answers a public argument by going face down, and he does it three times in this chapter, at verses 4, 22 and 45. The reply he gives sets the question as whom the Lord will shew to be his and whom he hath chosen, which moves the case off qualification and onto choice. The wording of 2 Timothy 2:19 stands close to it, the Lord knoweth them that are his. The trial is put off until morning.

Numbers 16:6-7

The test is the exact act that killed the sons of Aaron. Leviticus 10:1 has Nadab and Abihu take every man his censer, put fire therein and put incense thereon, and verse 2 says there went out fire from the Lord and devoured them. Verse 35 of this chapter reports the outcome in almost those words. Moses proposes a trial whose precedent stood in the high priest's own family, and two hundred and fifty men accept it.

Numbers 16:8-10

Moses names the object the speech had left unnamed. The complaint was made in the language of equality and the thing wanted was the office, seek ye the priesthood also. The phrase a small thing lands twice in this chapter and in opposite mouths, here of the Levites brought near to God, and at verse 13 of being brought out of Egypt.

Numbers 16:11

Moses puts the quarrel where Exodus 16:8 had already put it, saying that murmuring against the men who were set over them is murmuring against the Lord who set them. Aaron is the man named and Aaron speaks nowhere in this chapter, spoken about, spoken against, and at verse 47 running with a censer. The word murmur runs from here to verse 41 and on into 17:5 and 17:10, where a rod that buds is given as the answer to it.

Numbers 16:12-14

Dathan and Abiram bring a separate complaint and the chapter keeps it separate. They refuse the summons in the same four words at the start of verse 12 and at the end of verse 14, and they give Egypt the title the Torah gives Canaan, a land that floweth with milk and honey, which Albert Barnes calls a perverse contempt for the promise. Their charge that Moses never brought them into the land is answered two chapters back, where Numbers 14 puts the reason on record. Barnes reads the clause about putting out the eyes of these men as blinding them to broken promises, and others take it as a threat of literal blinding.

Numbers 16:15

Moses asks that their offering not be respected, and Matthew Henry hears Genesis 4 in it, where the Lord had not respect unto Cain and to his offering, and sets Jude 11 beside it for naming the way of Cain and the gainsaying of Core in one sentence. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown note that the man called very wroth here is the man 12:3 calls meek above all the men upon the face of the earth. The defence he makes is that he has taken nothing, and Samuel makes the same defence at the close of his own service in 1 Samuel 12:3, whose ox have I taken, or whose ass have I taken.

Numbers 16:16-17

The terms are set for one man against two hundred and fifty, each carrying his own censer, so every man in the company stands on his own act. Aaron is entered on the same footing and told to bring his censer like the rest. The question is settled by what happens at the door of the tent rather than by who makes the better case for himself.

Numbers 16:18-19

Two hundred and fifty men stand at the door of the tent holding censers, which is a place and an act the law had reserved to the house of Aaron. Verse 19 reports that Korah had gathered all the congregation, so by the morning of the trial the camp was with him. The glory of the Lord appears at the same point it appeared in 14:10, when the congregation was reaching for stones.

Numbers 16:20-22

The offer to consume the congregation in a moment is the third of its kind, after Exodus 32:10 and Numbers 14:12, and each time Moses stands in the way of it. The title he uses, the God of the spirits of all flesh, occurs twice in Scripture, here and at 27:16 where he asks for a man to be set over the congregation after him. His argument is the argument Abraham made at Genesis 18:23-25, that the many should not be swept away with the guilty.

Numbers 16:23-24

The order names Korah, Dathan and Abiram, and On the son of Peleth, listed among the leaders in verse 1, is absent from this list and from every list after it. The text gives no account of him, and Albert Barnes takes the silence to mean he drew back from the conspiracy. The word rendered tabernacle here stands for their dwellings, as verse 27 shows by calling the same places their tents.

Numbers 16:25-26

Moses goes to the men who refused to come to him, and the elders of Israel go with him, which puts the eldership visibly on one side before anything happens. The warning to the camp is to stand clear and to touch nothing of theirs, so every neighbour is given the means of separating himself. Everything from here to verse 33 happens in front of the whole congregation.

Numbers 16:27

The households come out and stand in the tent doors, wives and sons and little children, and the text records it and adds nothing. Deuteronomy 11:6 recalls this day and names Dathan and Abiram alone, with Korah left out of it. Numbers 26:11 adds the line that carries furthest, notwithstanding the children of Korah died not, and 1 Chronicles 6:37-38 traces Heman the singer back through Korah, the son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, which are the words of verse 1 here. Psalms 42, 44 to 49, 84, 85, 87 and 88 stand under the name of the sons of Korah.

Numbers 16:28-30

Moses stakes his commission on an outcome he names in advance and offers the common death of all men as the disproof, which is the shape of the test Deuteronomy 18:21-22 later sets for a prophet. The new thing he asks for uses the verb of Genesis 1:1, the word for creating. Quick in verse 30 means alive, and the pit is sheol, so what he describes is a descent into the grave with the dying left out.

Numbers 16:31-33

The ground splits at the instant the sentence ends, and the text says so before it says anything else. Whether Korah himself went down with them or burned with the two hundred and fifty is read both ways, since verse 32 swallows the men that appertained unto Korah while 26:10 says the earth swallowed them up together with Korah, and the commentators divide over it. Psalm 106:17 recalls the day and names Dathan and the company of Abiram.

Numbers 16:34-35

The camp runs from the sound of it, afraid the ground will take them too. Fire comes out from the Lord and consumes the two hundred and fifty, which is the wording of Leviticus 10:2 over Nadab and Abihu and of 11:1 at Taberah. Three judgments fall in this one chapter by three means, the earth at verse 32, the fire here, and the plague at verse 49.

Numbers 16:36-38

The censers outlast the men who carried them. Having been brought before the Lord they are counted hallowed, and the metal is beaten into plates to cover the altar, so the instruments of the offence end as the surface of the place where atonement is made. Albert Barnes reads sinners against their own souls as sinners against their own lives, since the sin cost them exactly that.

Numbers 16:39-40

Eleazar does the work, and the plates go on the altar where every man bringing a sacrifice will see them. The rule they carry is stated in one line, that no stranger who is not of the seed of Aaron come near to offer incense. 2 Chronicles 26:16-21 records a king of Judah with a censer in his hand being told the same thing by the priests, and Uzziah left the house a leper.

Numbers 16:41-42

One day after the ground closed, the whole congregation lays the deaths at the feet of Moses and Aaron and calls the dead the people of the Lord. Matthew Henry observes that the earth was scarcely closed and the smell of the fire was still in the air. This is the second murmuring in the chapter, at verses 11 and 41, and the word carries on into 17:5 and 17:10 where the rod of Aaron is given as the answer to it.

Numbers 16:43-45

The same order comes a second time in one chapter, at verse 21 and again here, and the same two men go face down. The difference is the timing, since verse 46 says the plague had already begun while they were still on the ground. Intercession here overtakes a judgment in progress.

Numbers 16:46-48

The censer that killed two hundred and fifty men the day before now stops a plague, and what has changed is the hand that carries it and the fire that fills it, taken from off the altar. Aaron runs, which is the one action recorded of him in the chapter, and he stands between the dead and the living until the plague is stayed. The office Korah wanted is settled by what it does for the people who had just accused the man holding it.

Numbers 16:49-50

Fourteen thousand and seven hundred die in the plague, and the count is given apart from those who died about the matter of Korah. Jude 11 sets Korah with Cain and Balaam and calls the offence the gainsaying of Core, which reads it as a pattern rather than a single day. The chapter closes with Aaron walking back to the door of the tent, and chapter 17 answers the whole affair with a dead rod that buds.