Korach (Part 2) - Numbers 16:1-18:32

Where's Korach?

As I noted in last week's Torah portion, the story of the spies in Numbers and Deuteronomy have a lot of differences, so much so that they appear to be two completely different stories with only a few core ideas shared between them.

Korach and his sons are mentioned in passing in 2 verses in Exodus (6:21,24).

In the Book of Numbers, Korach is mentioned 9 times in chapter 16, where he is killed, 2 times in chapter 17 as a warning reference, and a reminder that 17,500 men were killed because of him and his company.

Then there are 3 times in chapter 26, two of which mention the company of Korach and their fate, and one that says that the sons of Korach did not die, even though 16:27 says that Korach stood with his wives and children in front of their tents, and 16:32 says that the men and all that was theirs went into the pit.

There are lots of apologetics to explain how and why the sons of Korach survived.

Finally, chapter 27 has one mention of Korach's company when comparing him to someone who did not rebel against Yahweh.

And that's it.

Korach is never mentioned again in the Torah.

And remember, Deuteronomy, the first chapter, recounts the events of the spies, and chapter 6 speaks of the rebellion, and names the same men as those in Numbers 16:1, Dathan and Abiram.

But there's no mention of Korach.

It's as if the writer of Deuteronomy was not aware of the Levite, Korach, as being part of the rebellion at all.

The "sons of Korach" were later added as superscriptions (the first line) of 11 different Psalms, but no mention of them or their father was part of the original text.

There are 3 verses in Chronicles that mention Korach and his sons (misspelling one of their names, which is typical of Chronicles), but no reference to any rebellion.

So it appears that this rebellion was restricted to the 4 chapters in the Book of Numbers, and that no reference to it appears anywhere else.

And that should strike everyone as being quite odd. And the possibility that the story about Korach as being one of the last stories added should be considered.

I want to end this with a Jewish legend about what happened afterwards (Talmud, Sanhedrin 110a):

Rabbah bar bar Chanah (3rd century, CE) said, "Once, I was going on my way, a Bedouin said to me, "Come, I wll show you the place where Korach's company was swallowed up in the desert." I went and saw two holes from which smoke was rising. He soaked woolen fleeces in water, put them at the tip of his spear, and passed them over the holes. They were singed. "Listen!", he said to me. "What do you hear?" I heard them saying, "Moses and his Torah are true, and we are liars." [The Bedouin] said to me, "Every thirty days, Gehinnom turns them like meat roasting in a pot and they say, "Moses and his Torah is true, and we are liars!"

(Added note: Gehinnom is not in the Torah, and is a Rabbinical invention. The Torah text speaks of Sheol, which is more like Hades than Purgatory. Although, the Rabbis, affected by Christianity, slowly evolved Gehinnom to be something akin to Hell when it suited their purposes.)