Numbers 16:49

16:41-50 The gaping earth was scarcely closed, before the same sins are again committed, and all these warnings slighted. They called the rebels the people of the Lord; and find fault with Divine justice. The obstinacy of Israel notwithstanding the terrors of God's law, as given on mount Sinai, and the terrors of his judgments, shows how necessary the grace of God is to change men's hearts and lives. Love will do what fear cannot. Moses and Aaron interceded with God for mercy, knowing how great the provocation was. Aaron went, and burned incense between the living and the dead, not to purify the air, but to pacify an offended God. As one tender of the life of every Israelite, Aaron made all possible speed. We must render good for evil. Observe especially, that Aaron was a type of Christ. There is an infection of sin in the world, which only the cross and intercession of Jesus Christ can stay and remove. He enters the defiled and dying camp. He stands between the dead and the living; between the eternal Judge and the souls under condemnation. We must have redemption through His blood, even the remission of sins. We admire the ready devotion of Aaron: shall we not bless and praise the unspeakable grace and love which filled the Saviour's heart, when he placed himself in our stead, and bought us with his life? Greatly indeed hath God commended his love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, Ro 5:8.

Now they that died in the plague were fourteen thousand and seven hundred,.... 14,700. Thus what they were threatened with, that their carcasses should fall in the wilderness, Numbers 14:29 , was more and more fulfilled: beside them that died about the matter of Korah; these are not taken into the number here, even the two hundred fifty men of Korah's company, and the families of Dathan and Abiram, Numbers 16:32; how many they were is not certain, but they were but few in comparison of these.

49 . them that died about the matter of Korah ] i.e. the 250 princes. It should be noticed that the death of Korah himself is nowhere related in the chapter, Numbers 16:24; Numbers 16:27 a might seem to imply that Korah was about to be swallowed up in the earth with Dathan and Abiram; and this supposition is adopted by the writer of Numbers 26:10 . But apart from the critical reasons for distinguishing the narratives, and for reading ‘the tabernacle of Jehovah ’ in Numbers 16:24; Numbers 16:27 , it would be very strange that Korah should have been separated from his adherents in their punishment. In the fusing of the two stories by the compiler, a statement of the personal fate of Korah fell out of the chapter.

Verse 49. - Fourteen thousand and seven hundred. A very large number to have died in the course of a few minutes, as the narrative seems to imply. The plague was undoubtedly of a supernatural character, and cannot be considered as a pestilence or other natural visitation. Beside them that died about the matter of Korah. These were (1) the two hundred and fifty men who offered incense, (2) Dathan and Abiram, and their families, (3) probably Korah himself, (4) possibly some other partisans of Korah (see on verse 32), making in all about 300 souls. Thus we get the round number of 15,000 as the total of those that perished on this occasion. Numbers 16:49

A striking proof of the efficacy of that very Aaronic priesthood which the rebels had presumed to reject. The incense offering which had brought down destruction when presented by unauthorised hands, now in the hand of the true priest is the medium of instant salvation to the whole people. Aaron by his acceptable ministration and his personal self-devotion foreshadows emphatically in this transaction the perfect mediation and sacrifice of Himself made by Christ.

Thereupon they both went into the court of (פּני אל, as in Leviticus 9:5 ) the tabernacle, and God commanded them to rise up (הרמּוּ, Niphal of רמם equals רוּם; see Ges. 65, Anm. 5) out of this congregation, which He would immediately destroy. But they fell upon their faces in prayer, as in Numbers 16:21-22 . This time, however, they could not avert the bursting forth of the wrathful judgment, as they had done the day before ( Numbers 16:22 ). The plague had already commenced, when Moses told Aaron to take the censer quickly into the midst of the congregation, with coals and incense (הולך, imper. Hiph.), to make expiation for it with an incense-offering. And when this was done, and Aaron placed himself between the dead and the living, the plague, which had already destroyed 14,700 men, was stayed. The plague consisted apparently of a sudden death, as in the case of a pestilence raging with extreme violence, though we cannot regard it as an actual pestilence. The means resorted to by Moses to stay the plague showed afresh how the faithful servant of God bore the rescue of his people upon his heart. All the motives which he had hitherto pleaded, in his repeated intercession that this evil congregation might be spared, were now exhausted. He could not stake his life for the nation, as at Horeb (Exodus 32:32), for the nation had rejected him.

He could no longer appeal to the honour of Jehovah among the heathen, seeing that the Lord, even when sentencing the rebellious race to fall in the desert, had assured him that the whole earth should be filled with His glory (Numbers 14:20.). Still less could he pray to God that He would not be wrathful with all for the sake of one or a few sinners, as in Numbers 16:22, seeing that the whole congregation had taken part with the rebels. In this condition of things there was but one way left of averting the threatened destruction of the whole nation, namely, to adopt the means which the Lord Himself had given to His congregation, in the high-priestly office, to wipe away their sins, and recover the divine grace which they had forfeited through sin, - viz., the offering of incense which embodied the high-priestly prayer, and the strength and operation of which were not dependent upon the sincerity and earnestness of subjective faith, but had a firm and immovable foundation in the objective force of the divine appointment.

1 Corinthians 10:10 . Nor murmur , etc.; expression of contumacious discontent ( Matthew 20:11 ; Php 2:14 ), without right or reason. Against whom ? is discovered from the narrative , to which Paul here refers us. That this is to be found not in Numbers 14 (the more common view), but in Numbers 16:41 ; Numbers 16:49 (Calvin, de Wette, Osiander, Neander, Maier, Ewald), is clear, in the first place, because ἀπώλλ . ὑπὸ τ . ὀλοθρ . denotes a violent death, which does not tally with Numbers 14; and, in the second, because τινὲς αὐτῶν cannot apply to the whole people (except Caleb and Joshua), which it would have to do according to Numbers 14. If, however, what Paul has here in view is the murmuring against Moses and Aaron after the death of Korah and his company ( Numbers 16:41 ; Numbers 16:49 ), then his prohibition must refer not to discontent against God (which was, moreover, referred to already in 1 Corinthians 10:9 ), but only to murmuring against the divinely commissioned teachers (Paul, Apollos, and others), who, in their position and authoritative exercise of discipline, corresponded to the type of Moses and Aaron as the theocratic leaders and teachers of the rebellious people. And it is for this reason that he uses the second person here, although the first both precedes and follows it.