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Keep in mind that the Torah is written in topical, not chronological order, but there are clues in Scripture that Korach’s rebellion occurred weeks or months after the 12 spies returned from their journey into the Promised Land.
We know that the spies expedition occurred during the second year of their sojourn, toward the time of the grape harvest, probably September or October.
The reason we know the rebellion of Korach follows after the 12 spies expedition is because the people complain about the fact they’re going to die in this wilderness. They didn’t know they’re going to die in the wilderness until they had believed the false faithless report of the 10 spies and had been judged by God that they would die in the wilderness because of that failure.
I don’t think Korach’s rebellion was very long after this judgment, as it seems to still be very raw in the people’s consciousness.
The leaders of this rebellion are all generational contemporaries of Moses. Korach may be a little older than Moses but still a contemporary. None of these rebel leaders were young men. All of them had come out of Egypt as adults and presumably had no desire to die in the wilderness, in an unfamiliar place. They all thought that they could fix God’s judgement, that they could do a better job than Moses.
Roots of Korach’s rebellion
Numbers 16:1 gives us Korach’s patrilineal family tree. “Korach, the son of Yitzhar, the son of Qehat, the son of Levi…”
Levi, the patriarch of Korach and Moses’ clan was born in Canaan, as was Qehat (Kohath), one of Levi’s sons. They came to Egypt with Jacob and the other brothers.
According to Ex. 6:8, Qehat had four sons: Amram, Yitzhar, Chevron and Uzziel. Amram, the oldest of Qehat’s four sons is the father of Aaron and Moses. So it would make sense that Amram’s eldest son, Aaron, would have a significant leadership role in the tribe of Levi, but since Aaron was high priest, he couldn’t be high priest and the chieftain of the tribe of Levi, so God chose Korach’s uncle, Eltzafan the son of Uzziel (the youngest of Kohath’s sons) as the chieftain of the Levites. This rubbed Korach the wrong way, as Korach was the oldest son of the second brother, Yitzhar.
We already know that God often does not choose the first born to lead His people. We see that when God chose Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau and Judah and Joseph over Reuben, Simeon and Levi to receive special covenant blessings.
Even Moses, the younger son of Amram, was the one chosen by God to be the leader of the entire congregation.
Revolution from the top down, not the bottom up
Korach foments a rebellion along with two other men, Dathan and Aviram of the tribe of Reuben, but these rebels have different goals. Korach wanted Aaron’s position, while Dathan and Aviram wanted to usurp Moses. They were in league with each other but had very different goals.
Korach, Dathan and Aviram were able to gather up at least 250 men to join their rebellious cabal. These were not rabble, but men of influence with the people.
Look at how Moses deals with these rebels. He decides to deal with the rebels threatening Aaron’s position before he deals with the rebels who are targeting his own position.
Moses instructs Korach’s 250 followers to bring incense pans to the tent of meeting. Korach, Dathan and Aviram stay in their tents and refuse to obey Moses at all. Moses is setting up a great miracle here.
Korach’s 250 followers approach the tabernacle with these fire pans and when they try to use them to approach God, while their primary leaders stay behind in their homes.
It only takes a spark
Korach’s a very clever man. He was the consummate politician and uses a couple of oratory techniques common to all dictators, including Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Asaad, etc.
One thing Korach does is he appeals to the broader population by telling the people that all of them are equally holy, patting them on the back and telling them how good they are. Korach appealed to their desire to feel important. Politicians do this all the time. That is how they buy votes.
Korach tells the people that Aaron and his sons aren’t the only ones who are holy. Everyone is equally holy.
Korach also appeals to the people by handpicking individuals who are in strategically located positions in the Israelite hierarchy or in society to represent other individuals. Korach didn’t need to convince 100% of the people of Israel to support his rebellion. He only needed to convince the most influential, who then would persuade the people underneath them to go along. Very effective.
Korach and the other instigators said they deserve the positions Moshe and Aharon held unfairly and unrighteously. They worked for it and strive for it was given to them for any reason. They felt that it was theirs for the taking.
You only need very small percentage of the population, if it’s the right population, to shift the balance of power.
So, here you have less than 300 people creating a rebellion, in a congregation of 600,000 men, that if God hadn’t powerfully intervened, may have been successful in usurping Aaron and Moses from authority.
God didn’t sign on with the rebels and didn’t appreciate the fact that they were usurping His authority and they all perished as a result.
Scapegoat the innocent to absolve the guilty
Another thing that dictators or leaders of revolutions commonly do is identify a group of people and blame them for their dire predicament, redirecting their blame from themselves to this group. So what Korach did was tell the people that it was Moses and Aaron’s failure of leadership that prevented them from being able to enter the Promised Land and end their dull, seemingly aimless wandering in the wilderness, rather waking the people up to the real culprit, their own cowardice and lack of faith.
This is exactly what Hitler did when he scapegoated the Jews, gypsies, etc. in the Holocaust. Hitler told the German people that the existence of groups such as the Jews, gypsies, Ukranians, Poles and other groups that he declared “subhuman” were a drain on humanity and had to be destroyed for the German people and their “Aryan” race to be victorious. Hitler told the people that if they targeted these “subhuman” groups, they could benefit by taking their property, their artwork, their bank accounts because they deserved it and these people didn’t. It’s scary how effective that genocidal strategy was.
Korach, Dathan and Aviram did the same thing by convincing the people that they deserved more than what they had.
But I want to point out though all 250 of the men who assembled in front of the tabernacle with their incense pans, later died with them. Just as God did not send fire on the wives of Nadab and Abihu when they sinned, God didn’t punished the families of the 250 rebels. There is no indication their households were punished supernaturally. There’s no record of their wives, their sons or daughters, any of them suffering a punishment as a result of this rebellion. God focused His attention on the 250 rebels and spared their families, but he had to deal with the primary instigators first.
Then this begs the question: why were the families of the 250 spared but the families of Korach, Dathan and Aviram weren’t? Why did their families suffer such a severe punishment?
I believe that the supplication of Moses and Aaron made to God right after the 250 men showed up with Korah had much to do with it.
But they fell on their faces and said, “O God, God of the spirits of all flesh, when one man sins, will You be angry with the entire congregation?”
Numbers 16:22 NASB
Let God fight your battles
Moses and Aaron did not respond to evil with evil. They responded with humility. They dropped their faces to the ground before God, facing the Tent of Meeting and prayed for the congregation, the very congregation that was giving their tacit support to the rebels. Moses and Aaron didn’t defend themselves or argue their own case to the people. They didn’t treat Korach and his rebels higher than they deserved, just as Mordechai did not stroke Haman’s ego, Moses and Aaron didn’t stroke the egos of their opponents.
I wish our political leaders would respond with humility when they constituents get upset with them.
I would submit to you that the reason that the families of the 250 pseudo-priests were spared but the families of Korach, Dathan and Aviram weren’t is that the ranks of the 250 pseudo-priests were not from high ranking families and they weren’t Levites. They didn’t have the same closeness to God’s tabernacle and His laws that the Levites had. Since they didn’t know as much, He didn’t punish them as severely.
On the other hand, Korach, Dathan and Aviram were from high-ranking powerful families. Korach was a Levite and Dathan and Aviram were high ranking leaders of the tribe of Reuben. One man can have a lot of sway over a whole group of people and the higher that man’s position is, the more likely that is only God who can step in and correct him.
That is exactly what God did with Korach, Dathan and Aviram. He supernaturally punished them for ther rebellion and he then send a plague and punished many of the people who had tacitly agreed with and supported their rebellion against Moses and Aaron.
At this point is when Aaron really shows his leadership by bringing out his own incense pan and running through the midst of congregation with his burning incense and fervent prayers. It’s Aaron’s incense and Aaron’s prayers that God accepts and the plague is quenched. Aaron stands tall between the living and the dead. God obviously honors and accepts that offering and it stops the plague.
How do the people react to the display of God’s supernatural power? They complain, yet again, they complain.
They complain that they are all going to die in the wilderness. The older members of the congregation, those who were over 20 years old and had been sentenced by God to die in the wilderness had pinned their hopes on Korach, Dathan and Aviram’s rebellion. The people hoped that their rebellion would succeed and that they could return them to Egypt so they wouldn’t have to die living in tents in the wilderness due to their lack of faith. Now that dream has been dashed and they complain again.
They had slandered the promised land by calling the land of Egypt the land “flowing with milk and honey.” They lamented the leeks, onions and other garden bounty that Egypt offered that the wilderness did not. They really wanted Korach, Dathan and Aviram to guide them back to Egypt and negotiate a return to slavery there.
Now, they have come to the realization that there is no way they are going to wiggle out of the punishment God placed on them. They can’t enter the tabernacle willy-nilly or they will die instantly but they will also die in the wilderness. That’s a very jagged pill for them to swallow.
They were too cowardly to enter the Promised Land but they had the chutzpah to try to challenge God’s appointed leadership and go back to Egypt.
‘By whose authority do you do these things?’
Now, let’s turn to Luke 23:13–24, the account of the trial of Messiah Yeshua (Christ Jesus) in Pontius Pilate’s court. By this time, we know from the record of the Gospels that Yeshua had gained a significant following in the Galil (Galilee) and the countryside of Israel and this has reached into the urban areas as well. He would travel around the country healing people of illness, feeding multitudes of people and so on.
The common people supported Yeshua, but there were a few individuals strategically placed in positions of authority who vehemently opposed Yeshua, namely the Sadducees and High Priests. These elites were able to sway enough people in Jerusalem against Yeshua’s calling to do what they never would have done of their own volition, which was to demand His crucifixion.
As Yeshua was being led away to the crucifixion, He comes upon a group of women who are mourning His fate:
“Daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.’ Then they will begin ‘to say to the mountains, “fall on us,” and to the hills, “cover us”’ (Hos. 10:8). For if they do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?”
Luke 23:28–31 NASB
Yeshua ends his discourse with these women with a Hebrew idiom. Green wood is a symbol of pious, righteous acts, while dry wood represents wickedness, deceit or moral darkness.
Yeshua’s point is if those to pushed Pontius Pilate to have Him crucified really believed they were doing the right thing, just imagine how depraved and wicked they could be if they cast off all semblance of morality.
If they define murdering an innocent man as righteousness, then what is their definition of wickedness? Their wickedness must really be awful if this is how they define righteousness.
The rank-and-file citizenry knew, just as well as the two thieves were on the crosses on either side of Yeshua, that He had done nothing deserving death. He did nothing wrong, yet He was dying right alongside them.
Beware the desire for power
The lesson is this is that we need to pay careful attention to what those who have placed themselves in strategic places of power are telling us. Be mindful of the power they hold and how they are wielding it. Take note of what they can convince a large number of people to do, even though they are few.
The goal of the majority of the Sanhedrin, instigated by the High Priest was to kill an innocent man, who did nothing wrong.
If Yeshua’s fate had been put to a truly democratic vote, He probably would not have died, but it took just a small number of people to convince enough of the right people to ensure Yeshua’s execution.
Even in our time, it doesn’t take a consensus of 50%–90% of the population to make a massive impact. Look at the riots that have been igniting [as of June 2020] all over our country from Portland, Oregon, to Minneapolis, Atlanta and Washington, D.C.
Look for selfless leadership
Pay attention to what our leaders say and don’t say. Look closely at that they do.
Moses had asked God to have mercy on the people because the rebellion was instigated by only a few people. He wondered if all the people have to suffer because just a few leaders do wrong and the answer, unfortunately, is yes.
When a few people in high positions get it wrong, we all suffer. Not everyone suffers the same consequences but they all still suffer when the leadership leads people astray.
Beware the motives of popular movements
Korach has given us a great lesson on how to avoid being swayed and lead astray by corrupt leaders, dictators and tyrants. It also gives us a great lesson that even in Messiah Yeshua’s time, a few people can make a huge change on a population who would never have agreed to such things otherwise.
Korach might have been the first Marxist. He said that all the people were equally holy, yet was demanding that Aaron give his high station to him. Korach wasn’t asking for equality. He wanted to be more equal than others.
Notice that Korach doesn’t say that all the people are equally low. He says they are all equally of high standing. But it doesn’t work that way. It’s inevitable that the common denominator is the lowest common denominator.
Who’s the Thinker behind your movement?
Standing up to power-hungry, blood-thirsty tyrants is not easy. We have to speak up based on God’s wisdom, not our own.
Fortunately, God has given us examples in His word of people who got it right as well as people who got it totally wrong. God does things on His terms, not ours. He expects us to approach Him on His terms and His instructions. He does not approach us on our terms or our instructions. He repeatedly tells Moses and Aaron, “Do this as I have shown you” or “as I instructed you.” Nothing Moses said or built was done based on his whims, but based on God’s explicit instructions.
It’s important that we do our best to apply His instructions on His terms, not our own. When we do things on our terms, God is not with us.
After the 10 spies died, the people decided they would try to take the land. They finally decided to do what God had originally asked them to do, but it wasn’t on God’s terms so their effort failed.
We can even do something that God told us to do but don’t do under His terms. He’s not going to bless that decision. God is very adamant about that.
The path He has given to us is a good path, but we may not always understand it. Everything God does is right according to His ways, and we need His help to follow that path.
Summary: Tammy