Numbers16chapter 16

Numbers 16:12-14

Dathan and Abiram refuse with We will not come at verse 12 and again at verse 14. They give Egypt the Torah's title for Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey, which Albert Barnes calls a perverse contempt for the promise. Barnes reads the clause about gouging out the eyes of these men as blinding them to broken promises, and others take it literally.

The charge of making himself ruler repeats the words thrown at Moses in Egypt at Exodus 2:14, before he ever led the people out. Moses had asked God to send another man at Exodus 4:13. Dathan and Abiram accuse him of seizing an office he tried to refuse.

Fields and vineyards were what the spies had carried back from Eshcol at 13:23, a cluster of grapes on a pole. The generation that saw the fruit refused the land, and 14:30 barred them from it. These men blame Moses for a loss their own refusal earned.

Moses asks the LORD, Do not regard their offering, and Matthew Henry hears Genesis 4:5, where He had no regard for Cain and his offering. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown note that the man very angry here is the man 12:3 calls a very humble man. Samuel makes the same defence of having taken nothing at 1 Samuel 12:3.

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.

The number of censers is set at 250, one for each man, and Aaron's makes one more. Verse 39 calls them bronze, and after the trial these same vessels are hammered into plating for the altar. Each man supplied the metal of his own memorial.

Numbers 16:18-19

Two hundred and fifty men stand at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting holding censers, a place and an act the law had reserved to the house of Aaron. Verse 19 reports that Korah had gathered his whole assembly against them. The glory of the LORD appears as it did at 14:10, when the congregation reached for stones.

The glory appears to the crowd Korah had gathered, before a word of judgment is spoken. Exodus 16:10 has the same sight after the complaint about food, and there it brought quail and manna. Here it brings a sentence.

Numbers 16:20-22

The threat to consume them in an instant is the third of its kind, after Exodus 32:10 and Numbers 14:12, and each time Moses stands in the way. The title the God of the spirits of all flesh occurs here and at 27:16, where he asks for a successor. His plea follows Abraham's at Genesis 18:23-25, that the many not perish with the guilty.

The verb is the one verse 9 used when God separated the Levites from the congregation. Now God tells Moses and Aaron to stand apart so the whole people can be consumed. After the prayer, verse 24 narrows it to three households.

the God of the spirits of all flesh: Adam Clarke reads the title as proof that Moses and Aaron held man to be made of flesh and spirit, two distinct parts. The God who made each spirit knows which one has sinned. The prayer asks for a judgment that falls on the guilty man alone.

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.

Albert Barnes places Korah's tent on the south side of the tabernacle, with Dathan and Abiram in the outer line of the camp on the same side. The three households stood close together. Barnes adds that the three still did not share one fate.

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.

Cyprian of Carthage draws from the verse that people who stay joined to such men are bound by the same guilt and share their crime. The danger he names lies in staying close. Even their goods were to be left untouched.

The households stand at the entrances to their tents with their wives and children and infants, and the text adds nothing. Numbers 26:11 adds the line that reaches furthest: the line of Korah did not die out. At 1 Chronicles 6:37-38 Heman the singer is traced back to Korah, and eleven psalms stand under the name of the sons of Korah.

Numbers 16:28-30

Moses stakes his commission on an outcome named in advance, which is the shape of the test Deuteronomy 18:21-22 later sets for a prophet. The something unprecedented he asks for uses the verb of Genesis 1:1, the word for creating. They go down alive into Sheol, so the grave takes them before death does.

The fate of all men is the common end of sickness and age that every family knows. Moses sets his whole commission against it and names no middle outcome. An ordinary death would clear the rebels and condemn him.

The charge at the end uses the verb of 14:11 and 14:23, where the LORD complains of the people's contempt for him. Dathan and Abiram have repeated the spies' sin. Adam Clarke renders the sign literally as the LORD creating a creation, a thing never done before.

Numbers 16:31-33

The ground splits the moment Moses finishes speaking. Whether Korah himself went down or burned with the 250 is read both ways, since verse 32 swallows all Korah’s men while 26:10 says the earth swallowed them along with Korah. Psalm 106:17 recalls the day and names Dathan and the assembly of Abiram.

Albert Barnes reads Korah's men as his followers in the revolt, since 26:11 says the sons of Korah did not die. Households and goods went down together, so the tents that stood open at verse 27 were gone. Nothing of theirs was left to touch.

Matthew Henry reads the descent as a picture of the ruin of sinners who die unrepentant, and he hears it in Psalm 55:15. He sets it beside David's prayer at Psalm 69:15 that the pit not shut its mouth on him. They vanished while the assembly watched.

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.

Matthew Henry holds that Korah burned here with the 250, as the priesthood was his aim and he would have kept his place at the tent door. Adam Clarke places Korah in the pit with Dathan and Abiram. The men who hoped to be priests became the offering.

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.

Albert Barnes explains that Eleazar is sent because Aaron, as high priest and one of those who offered incense, could not be defiled by going among the dead. Leviticus 21:11 keeps the high priest from every dead body. The coals were scattered and never used for incense again.

The plated altar and Aaron's staff at 17:10 are both kept as a sign, one for each side of the dispute. The censers show what happened to the men who took the office. The staff shows the man God chose.

Numbers 16:39-40

Eleazar does the work, and the plates go on the altar where every worshiper will see them. Their rule is one line: no outsider who is not a descendant of Aaron should approach to offer incense before the LORD. At 2 Chronicles 26:16-21 King Uzziah takes a censer, is rebuked by the priests and is struck with leprosy.

The word for outsider is the one Numbers 3:10 and 18:7 use for anyone outside the priestly family, and here it takes in Korah's own Levites. The warning carries Korah's name. The rule is fixed to the altar itself.

Numbers 16:41-42

The next day the whole congregation lays the deaths on Moses and Aaron: You have killed the LORD’s people! Matthew Henry observes that the earth had scarcely closed and the smell of the fire still hung in the air. This is the chapter's second grumbling, and chapter 17 gives Aaron's rod as the answer.

Moses and Aaron turn to the tent as the crowd presses on them, and the cloud covers it at once. John Gill reads their move as a search for shelter, safety and counsel near the presence of God. The glory appears a second time in the chapter.

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.

The word comes to Moses alone this time, where verse 20 addressed Moses and Aaron together. John Gill places the two standing at the door of the tent with the LORD in the cloud above it. The speech repeats the threat of verse 21.

The first threat at verse 21 fell on the crowd Korah had gathered. This one falls on the whole congregation, who blamed Moses and Aaron for the dead at verse 41. Both times the two men plead for the people.

Numbers 16:46-48

The censer that killed 250 men the day before now halts a plague, and what has changed is the hand that carries it and the fire from the altar that fills it. Aaron runs, the one action recorded of him here, and stands between the living and the dead. The office Korah wanted is settled by what it does for its accusers.

Albert Barnes reads Aaron's act as a picture of the mediation of Christ, his standing between God and the guilty in the sacrifice of himself. Ambrose of Milan praises Aaron as a shepherd who put his own life in the way of death for the flock. The high priest carried atonement out to the people.

John Wesley infers that the plague moved through the camp from its edge, taking one person after another. Aaron placed himself at the line it had reached, so the dead lay on one side and the living on the other. There it stopped.

Numbers 16:49-50

Those who died from the plague numbered 14,700, counted apart from those who died on account of Korah. Jude 11 sets Korah with Cain and Balaam, which reads the offence as a pattern rather than a single day. The chapter closes with Aaron returning to the Tent of Meeting, and chapter 17 answers the whole affair with a dead rod that buds.

Aaron goes back to the tent door where the trial of the censers began at verse 18. The man the crowd blamed for the dead is the man who saved the living. The day closes where it opened.