Numbers 16 Swallowed Up or Burned to a Crisp

seekeroftruth

Well-Known Member
Numbers 16:23 Then the Lord said to Moses, 24 “Say to the assembly, ‘Move away from the tents of Korah, Dathan and Abiram.’”

25 Moses got up and went to Dathan and Abiram, and the elders of Israel followed him. 26 He warned the assembly, “Move back from the tents of these wicked men! Do not touch anything belonging to them, or you will be swept away because of all their sins.” 27 So they moved away from the tents of Korah, Dathan and Abiram. Dathan and Abiram had come out and were standing with their wives, children and little ones at the entrances to their tents.

28 Then Moses said, “This is how you will know that the Lord has sent me to do all these things and that it was not my idea: 29 If these men die a natural death and suffer the fate of all mankind, then the Lord has not sent me. 30 But if the Lord brings about something totally new, and the earth opens its mouth and swallows them, with everything that belongs to them, and they go down alive into the realm of the dead, then you will know that these men have treated the Lord with contempt.”

31 As soon as he finished saying all this, the ground under them split apart 32 and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them and their households, and all those associated with Korah, together with their possessions. 33 They went down alive into the realm of the dead, with everything they owned; the earth closed over them, and they perished and were gone from the community. 34 At their cries, all the Israelites around them fled, shouting, “The earth is going to swallow us too!”

35 And fire came out from the Lord and consumed the 250 men who were offering the incense.

What a cools story! I've repeated this story. My Sunday School kids loved this story. My friends in Bible Study are amazed that they missed it and those who didn't miss it.... love it as much as I do. It's just so supernatural!

I got this commentary from the easy English site.

The terrible thing that happened next was God’s punishment. It was ‘something new’. Moses wanted everyone to know this. Nobody had seen anything like it before. The ground opened up and the wicked men went down alive into a hole in the ground. The *Israelites understood that these people were going to Sheol. This was God’s judgement on them.

The Israelites used the word Sheol to describe the place where people go after death. Of course, the person’s body remains in the grave. But the person’s spirit does not remain in the body after death. So people would say that the person’s spirit was in Sheol. For a wicked person, the idea of Sheol included the idea of punishment. A wicked person would go to a terrible place that is dark and far away from God. The Israelites actually saw when Korah, Dathan and Abiram suddenly disappeared into this dark place! And everyone was very afraid.

Then, God punished Korah’s 250 followers. He sent a fire to kill them.

This is a very sad story. These men had opposed God. They had opportunities to repent. But they continued to oppose God. So God punished them. But God did not kill Korah’s sons (Numbers 26:11). They had not joined their father to oppose Moses and Aaron. Their descendants wrote many psalms (songs about God that people use to worship him). The Book of Psalms is in the Old Testament. See, for example, Psalms 84, 85, 87 and 88.

But the Jews remembered Korah as a wicked man who opposed God (Jude 11).​

Numbers 16.jpg

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