Study Desk

So they said one to another, "Let us appoint a [new] leader and return to Egypt."

and they spoke to all the congregation of the sons of Israel, saying, "The land through which we passed as spies is an exceedingly good land.

"Only do not rebel against the LORD; and do not fear the people of the land, for they will be our prey. Their protection has been removed from them, and the LORD is with us. Do not fear them."

The LORD said to Moses, "How long will these people treat me disrespectfully and reject Me? And how long will they not believe in Me, despite all the [miraculous] signs which I have performed among them?

"I will strike them with the pestilence (plague) and dispossess them, and will make you into a nation greater and mightier than they."

and they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land. They have heard that You, LORD, are among these people [of Israel], that You, LORD, are seen face to face, while Your cloud stands over them; and that You go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night.

'But your children whom you said would become plunder, I will bring in, and they will know the land which you have despised and rejected.

'Your sons shall be wanderers and shepherds in the wilderness for forty years, and they will suffer for your unfaithfulness (spiritual infidelity), until your corpses are consumed in the wilderness.

'I, the LORD, have spoken. I will most certainly do this to all this evil congregation who are gathered together against Me. In this wilderness they shall be consumed [by war, disease, and plagues], and here they shall die.'"

They got up early in the morning and went up to the ridge of the hill country, saying, "Look, here we are; we have indeed sinned, but we will go up to the place which the LORD has promised."

'Then the priest shall make atonement for all the congregation of the sons of Israel, and they will be forgiven, for it was an error and they have brought their offering, an offering by fire to the LORD, and their sin offering before the LORD, for their error.

and they put him in custody, because it had not been explained [by God] what should be done to him.

and they rose up [in rebellion] before Moses, together with some of the Israelites, two hundred and fifty leaders of the congregation chosen in the assembly, men of distinction.

They assembled together against Moses and Aaron, and said to them, "You have gone far enough, for all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the LORD is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the LORD?"

Then Moses sent to call Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab; but they said [defiantly], "We will not come up.

Moses said to Korah, "You and all your company are to appear before the LORD tomorrow, both you and they along with Aaron.

So they each took his own censer and put fire on it and laid incense on it; and they stood at the doorway of the Tent of Meeting (tabernacle), with Moses and Aaron.

But they fell on their faces [before the LORD], and said, "O God, God of the spirits of all flesh! When one man sins, will You be angry with the entire congregation?"

So they got back from around the tents of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram; and Dathan and Abiram came out and stood at the doorway of their tents with their wives and their sons and their little children.

"But if the LORD creates an entirely new thing, and the ground opens its mouth and swallows them up, along with all that belongs to them, and they descend alive into Sheol (the nether world, the place of the dead), then you will understand that these men have spurned and rejected the LORD!"