Moses and Aaron really had to put up with a lot, but I guess that is true with a lot of leaders. In Numbers 16, we see that Korah, one of the Kohathites, conspired with three men from the tribe of Reuben, to incite a rebellion agains Moses. Somehow, they got 250 other prominent community leaders to join them.
Jealousy seems to be the real problem, as we can see by their statement: “What right do you have to act as though your are greater than the rest of the Lord’s people?”
Moses fell face down on the ground when he heard what was happening. He knew he was called by God and they were not, so he offers them a challenge. He tells Korah that he and his followers must prepare incense burners and light fires the next day to burn incense before the Lord. From Moses’ words, it looks as if Moses recognized Korah wanted to be a priest.
Dathan and Abiram, who were not Levites, but descendants of the tribe of Reuben, refused to come before Moses when he summoned them. Unlike Korah, they did not want to be priests, but were instead angry that Moses had brought them out of Egypt – a place they described as a land flowing with milk and honey – and had not given them a new homeland as promised. They never mentioned the refusal to go in and take the land.
Moses tells them to bring their incense burners and present them before the Lord. (You have to wonder if they so soon forgot about what happened to Aaron’s own sons Nadab and Abihu, who were actual priests and what happened to them when they burned strange incense before the Lord.)
It might not have been so bad if it were only Korah, Dathan, Abiram and 250 followers, but Korah “stirred up the entire community against Moses and Aaron.”
When Moses and Aaron saw that the Lord was ready to destroy all of the people, they fell face down on the ground and pleaded with God not to be angry with all the people when only one man sins. Moses and Aaron must have been pretty persuasive in urging the Israelites to keep away from the the tents of the wicked men and not to touch anything that belonged to them. He makes it clear to the people that they will know these men had shown contempt for the Lord when the earth opens up and swallows them and all their belongings and they die. The 250 men who were offering incense were burned up when fire blazed forth from the Lord.
As a warning to the people, the metal from the incense burners was hammered into a thin sheet and used to cover the altar.
One would think that after all of this, there would be no more grumbling and complaining against Moses and Aaron, but the very next morning, the whole community was muttering again. Why were they so dense?
When the Lord tells Moses to get away from the people so He can destroy them, Moses tells Aaron to quickly take an incense burner filled with coals from the altar and walk among the people to purify them and protect them from the plague the Lord had already loosed. It’s hard to believe, but 14,700 people died in that plague before Aaron was able to stop it.
How was Moses to make the people see whom God had chosen as his priest. Each leader of the twelve tribes was to bring a wooden staff on which their tribal name was inscribed. Note that it is from the twelve ancestral tribes and not from the twelve tribes as they were numbered at the beginning of the book. In other words, so that the Levites could have a staff representing them, instead of Ephraim and Manasses each bringing a staff, there was probably one for Joseph. Each tribal leader, including one for the tribe of Levi, placed a staff in the Tabernacle in front of the Ark containing the stone tables of the Covenant. The Lord told them that buds would sprout on the staff of the one God chooses. “Then I will finally put an end to the people’s murmuring and complaining against you.”
Sure enough, the next day, it was Aaron’s rod that budded, in fact, it “sprouted, budded, blossomed, and produced ripe almonds.” Aaron’s staff was to be placed permanently before the Ark of the Covenant as a warning to rebels.
Tomorrow, it’s Numbers 18 – 20.
Until next time…
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