Shabbat Parashat Korach - 5782

Shabbat Parashat Korach - 5782

Rabbi Hal Miller

Let each man take his fire pan and you shall place incense on them and

you shall bring near before God each man his fire pan, two hundred and

fifty fire pans, and you and Aharon, each man with his fire pan.

[Bamibar 16:17]

At first glance, our portion seems to have a problem with arithmetic. In 16:1

Korach separated himself along with Datan, Aviram, and On. That is four.

They then come up with 250 men from the rest of the nation, which totals

254. In our verse, Aharon shows up too which should make 255, yet Moshe

counts only a total of 250 fire pans. How do we reconcile this?

A couple of them are easy. On ben Pelet dropped out of the rebellion very

early on, so 254. In 16:6, Moshe tells them to take fire pans, "Korach and his

entire assembly." But our verse puts the 250 figure before listing Korach and

Aharon, so we can see that, although Moshe told Korach to bring his own pan

in 6, here he is listed outside of the 250, so we are down to 253 to find. Aharon

also is mentioned after the count and is thus not included.That leaves us with 252.

Many commentators mention that there were really three rebellions going on

here. Korach wanted the Kehuna, Datan and Aviram wanted the firstborn

status returned to their tribe of Reuven, and the 250 leaders were looking to

unseat Moshe from his political power. They were united only in opposing

Moshe, but had in fact conflicting demands with each other. This division

points us toward verse 16:12, where Moshe sent for Datan and Aviram

separate from his dealing with Korach.

But why would Moshe send for them? Were they no longer in attendance

at the big event? Ramban says that this is precisely the case. When Moshe

and Korach squared off, Moshe set up a test with the incense to show

who God wanted as the Kohen Gadol. All well and good, but Datan and

Aviram didn't care. Their complaint had to do with firstborn status, not the

priesthood, so thinking their demands were not going to be addressed,

they went home.

Although they were present in verses 6 and 7 when Moshe told everyone

to grab their fire pan, that is when they left. In verse 8, Moshe is specifically

addressing the "offspring of Levi", meaning Korach, whose number had

shrunk yet again by another two, down to 250 plus Korach by the time of

our verse. Korach, Datan, Aviram, and their households were swallowed

up by the miraculous pit, but the 250 other men were burned by a heavenly

flame in verse 35. The arithmetic works.