The people's grumbling has just earned them another forty years in the desert, and yet they continue to moan. They just don't learn. This time, two hundred and fifty community leaders led by Korah, Dathan and Abiram rise up aginst Moses and Aaron. They accuse the brothers of going too far in exalting themselves above the community, something which they have no right to do because all the people are holy. They do have a point - the community is supposed to be holy, and any superiority or arrogance on Moses and Aaron's part would be wrong - but there a few flaws in their argument. Firstly, Moses and Aaron did not choose their positions. It was God who called them to be His spokesman and His priest, and it was not for the people to question His choices. Secondly, if Moses and Aaron had been abusing these positions, the leaders would have had a right to complain, but that does not seem to have been the case. There is no evidence of them demanding special privileges, and we have already been told that Moses was the most humble of men. Finally, although the Israelites were meant to be God's chosen people, they had not proved themselves to be holy. They appear to have spent most of their time in the desert grumbling against God, and He has had to repeat Himself so many times that you start to wonder if they listened to Him at all. They were in no position to be claiming privileges for themselves.
Moses first reaction is to fall face down. Generally this is considered to be an attitude of prayer, so presumably that's what he was doing. Instead of listing his credentials and telling the leaders why they should listen to him, he gets down on his knees and prays. I wish that was my gut reaction to problems, but I'm afraid that's something I'm still working on. When Moses stands back up again, he tells them that they will gather the next day and God will show who is holy and who He has chosen. This may sound like Moses is saying "I'll show you God likes me better", which would rather prove the leaders' point, but I don't think that's what's going on here. This isn't about proving Moses right, it's about proving the leaders wrong, showing them the error of their ways. But more than that, it's about handing the dispute over to God. Remember, there was alwas the chance that God could side with the leaders.
Of course, He doesn't. The following day, the three men who led the rebellion - Korah, Dathan and Abiram - are swallowed up by the earth while the two hundred and fifty who followed them are destroyed by fire. The people still haven’t learnt their lesson though, and the next day they start complaining again, accusing Moses and Aaron of killing the leaders. God really loses His temper now and sends out a plague which Aaron only succeeds in stopping once 14, 700 people have died. I used that phrase “loses His temper” without really thinking about it, but now it has made me think. Maybe when God punished people like this it wasn’t because He was being deliberately hard or cruel, it was because He was angry. He feels just like we do, but the difference is that when God gets mad He has the power and the authority to do something about it.
You’d think that God would be happy that He’d made His point by now, but he knows that the Israelites need telling several times before they pay any attention, so He gives it one last shot. He tells Moses to bring one staff for each leader of the ancestral tribes, including one for Aaron as leader of the Levites, to the Tent of Meeting. He says that the staff belonging to the man He chooses with sprout, and then He can be rid of the people’s constant grumbling. The next day, Moses goes to the Tent of Meeting and sees that Aaron’s staff has sprouted, blossomed and produced almonds. God has appointed His man for all the people to see. Now that they have seen they can finally believe, but it would have gone better for them it they had believed without having to see and trusted Moses and Aaron in the first place. We need to have faith in other people as well as in God. As Yul Bryner sings in The King and I, “unless somebody trusts somebody sometime, there’ll be nothing in the world excepting fishes”.
Now that God has reestablished Aaron as priest, He reminds him of some of the terms and conditions of his contract. The Levites are to take responsibility for the care of the Tent of Meeting, but Aaron and his sons alone must care for the sanctuary and the altar. The Levites will not have an inheritance in the land because God is their inheritance, but they will take as their wages all that is offered or tithed or devoted to God. And from now on, the people must not come near the Tent, meaning that only the Levites may approach God. God still calls His followers to set themselves apart from the world and live different lives, but He no longer makes these distinctions as to who can and can’t come near to Him. That belonged to the old covenant, where holiness was achieved through actions not through grace. Now we can all approach Him, no matter who we are or where we are coming from.
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