For Teaching

Numbers 16: What the Passage Says

148 claims across 50 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Numbers 16 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

Korah, a Levite, joins with Dathan, Abiram, and On, along with 250 respected leaders, to challenge the authority of Moses and Aaron, claiming the whole community is holy. Moses sets up a test with censers of incense to let the LORD show whom he has chosen. The ground opens and swallows Dathan, Abiram, and their households, and fire kills the 250 men offering incense; their censers are hammered into a covering for the altar as a sign. The next day the people blame Moses and Aaron for the deaths, a plague breaks out, and Aaron stops it with incense after 14,700 have died.

Claim by Claim

16:1
- Korah was the son of Izhar.
- Izhar was the son of Kohath.
- Kohath was the son of Levi.
- Dathan and Abiram were the sons of Eliab.
- On was the son of Peleth.
- Dathan, Abiram, and On were Reubenites.
- Korah took men (the verb has no stated object in the original, so what or whom he took is unspecified).
16:2
- Korah and those with him rose up before Moses.
- Certain of the children of Israel rose up with them.
- Those who rose up included two hundred and fifty leaders of the assembly.
- These men were summoned members of the congregation.
- These men were men of reputation.
16:3
- They assembled together against Moses and against Aaron.
- They said to Moses and Aaron that they had taken too much upon themselves.
- They said the whole congregation is holy, every one of them.
- They said the LORD is among the congregation.
- They asked why Moses and Aaron exalt themselves above the assembly of the LORD.
16:4
- Moses heard this.
- Moses fell on his face.
16:5
- Moses spoke to Korah and to all his company.
- Moses said that tomorrow the LORD will make known who belongs to him.
- Moses said the LORD will make known who is holy.
- Moses said the LORD will bring that one near to himself.
- Moses said the LORD will bring near to himself the one he has chosen.
16:6
- Moses told Korah and all his company to do this: take censers.
16:7
- Moses told them to put fire in the censers.
- Moses told them to put incense in the censers before the LORD tomorrow.
- Moses said the man whom the LORD chooses is the one who is holy.
- Moses told the sons of Levi that they had taken too much upon themselves.
16:8
- Moses said to Korah, listen, you sons of Levi.
16:9
- Moses asked whether it seemed a small thing to them that the God of Israel had separated them from the congregation of Israel.
- Moses said God had brought them near to himself to do the service of the LORD's tabernacle.
- Moses said God had brought them near to stand before the congregation to minister to them.
16:10
- Moses said God had brought Korah near to himself.
- Moses said God had brought all Korah's brothers the sons of Levi near with him.
- Moses asked whether they were seeking the priesthood as well.
16:11
- Moses said that for this reason Korah and all his company were gathered together against the LORD.
- Moses asked what Aaron is, that they should murmur against him.
16:12
- Moses sent to summon Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab.
- Dathan and Abiram said they would not come up.
16:13
- Dathan and Abiram asked whether it was a small thing that Moses had brought them up out of a land flowing with milk and honey to kill them in the wilderness.
- Dathan and Abiram asked whether Moses must also make himself a ruler over them.
16:14
- Dathan and Abiram said Moses had not brought them into a land flowing with milk and honey.
- Dathan and Abiram said Moses had not given them an inheritance of fields and vineyards.
- Dathan and Abiram asked whether Moses would put out the eyes of these men.
- Dathan and Abiram said they would not come up.
16:15
- Moses became very angry.
- Moses said to the LORD not to regard their offering.
- Moses said he had not taken one donkey from them.
- Moses said he had not harmed one of them.
16:16
- Moses said to Korah that he and all his company were to be before the LORD tomorrow.
- Moses said Korah, his company, and Aaron were to be there.
16:17
- Moses said each man was to take his censer.
- Moses said each was to put incense in his censer.
- Moses said each was to bring his censer before the LORD.
- Moses said there were two hundred and fifty censers.
- Moses said Korah and Aaron were each to bring his censer also.
16:18
- Each man took his censer.
- They put fire in the censers.
- They laid incense on the fire.
- They stood at the entrance of the tent of meeting with Moses and Aaron.
16:19
- Korah gathered all the congregation against Moses and Aaron at the entrance of the tent of meeting.
- The glory of the LORD appeared to all the congregation.
16:20
- The LORD spoke to Moses and to Aaron.
16:21
- The LORD told them to separate themselves from among this congregation.
- The LORD said he would consume the congregation in a moment.
16:22
- Moses and Aaron fell on their faces.
- They addressed God as the God of the spirits of all flesh.
- They asked whether God would be angry with the whole congregation when one man sins.
16:23
- The LORD spoke to Moses.
16:24
- The LORD told Moses to speak to the congregation.
- The LORD said they were to get away from around the dwelling of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.
16:25
- Moses rose up and went to Dathan and Abiram.
- The elders of Israel followed Moses.
16:26
- Moses spoke to the congregation.
- Moses told them to depart from the tents of these wicked men.
- Moses told them to touch nothing belonging to them.
- Moses warned they would otherwise be swept away in all their sins.
16:27
- The people got away from around the dwelling of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram on every side.
- Dathan and Abiram came out.
- Dathan and Abiram stood at the entrance of their tents.
- Their wives stood there.
- Their sons stood there.
- Their little ones stood there.
16:28
- Moses said that by this they would know the LORD had sent him to do all these works.
- Moses said he had not done them of his own mind.
16:29
- Moses said that if these men die the ordinary death of all men, the LORD has not sent him.
- Moses said that if they suffer the fate visited on all men, the LORD has not sent him.
16:30
- Moses said that if the LORD creates something new, and the earth opens its mouth and swallows them with all that belongs to them, and they go down alive into Sheol, then they would know these men had treated the LORD with contempt.
16:31
- Moses finished speaking all these words.
- The ground under them split apart.
16:32
- The earth opened its mouth.
- The earth swallowed them and their households.
- The earth swallowed all the people who belonged to Korah.
- The earth swallowed all their goods.
16:33
- They and all that belonged to them went down alive into Sheol.
- The earth closed over them.
- They perished from among the assembly.
16:34
- All Israel who were around them fled at their cry.
- They said the earth might swallow them up also.
16:35
- Fire came out from the LORD.
- The fire consumed the two hundred and fifty men who were offering the incense.
16:36
- The LORD spoke to Moses.
16:37
- The LORD told Moses to speak to Eleazar the son of Aaron the priest.
- Eleazar was to take up the censers out of the burning.
- The fire was to be scattered at a distance.
- The censers are holy.
16:38
- The censers belonged to men who sinned at the cost of their own lives.
- The censers were to be hammered into broad plates as a covering for the altar.
- The men had offered the censers before the LORD.
- For that reason the censers are holy.
- The plates would be a sign to the children of Israel.
16:39
- Eleazar the priest took the bronze censers.
- The censers had been offered by those who were burned.
- The censers were hammered out into broad plates as a covering for the altar.
16:40
- The plates were to be a memorial to the children of Israel.
- The purpose was that no outsider who is not of the seed of Aaron should come near to offer incense before the LORD.
- The purpose was that such a person not become like Korah and his company.
- This was as the LORD had said to Eleazar by the hand of Moses.
16:41
- On the next day the whole congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron.
- They said Moses and Aaron had killed the people of the LORD.
16:42
- The congregation gathered against Moses and Aaron.
- They looked toward the tent of meeting.
- The cloud covered the tent.
- The glory of the LORD appeared.
16:43
- Moses and Aaron came before the tent of meeting.
16:44
- The LORD spoke to Moses.
16:45
- The LORD told them to get away from among this congregation.
- The LORD said he would consume them in a moment.
- Moses and Aaron fell on their faces.
16:46
- Moses told Aaron to take a censer.
- Moses told Aaron to put fire in it from off the altar.
- Moses told Aaron to put incense on the fire.
- Moses told Aaron to go quickly to the congregation.
- Moses told Aaron to make atonement for them.
- Moses said wrath had gone out from the LORD.
- Moses said the plague had begun.
16:47
- Aaron took the censer as Moses had commanded.
- Aaron ran into the midst of the assembly.
- The plague had begun among the people.
- Aaron put on the incense.
- Aaron made atonement for the people.
16:48
- Aaron stood between the dead and the living.
- The plague was stopped.
16:49
- Those who died in the plague were fourteen thousand seven hundred.
- This number was besides those who died on account of the matter of Korah.
16:50
- Aaron returned to Moses at the entrance of the tent of meeting.
- The plague was stopped.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

16:1: The list of fathers is doing work here: Korah descends from Kohath, one of the three clans of the tribe of Levi. Levites were not priests; they were the tribe assigned to serve the sanctuary, and the Kohathites in particular carried its holiest furnishings. Priesthood itself belonged only to Aaron and his sons, who were also Kohathites. So Korah is a close relative of Aaron making a claim on Aaron's office. Dathan, Abiram, and On come from Reuben, the tribe descended from Jacob's firstborn son, a tribe that had lost the precedence a firstborn would normally hold. The Hebrew of the opening verb is broken and unclear; "took men" in the King James is a guess at a sentence that does not finish in the original.
16:2: "Princes" in the King James means chiefs or leaders, not royalty. These 250 are the recognized heads of families and clans who represented the people in public assembly, the establishment, not a fringe. "Men of renown" is literally "men of name."
16:3: "Holy" in this book does not mean morally good. It means set apart for God, belonging to the sacred sphere rather than the everyday one. Korah's argument turns on that: if the whole nation has been set apart, no smaller group needs privileged access.
16:4: Falling face-down on the ground was the standard posture of submission and urgent appeal, used before a king or before God. It signals distress and petition, not collapse.
16:5: "Come near" is a technical term throughout these chapters. It means being permitted to approach the sanctuary and handle sacred things, physical proximity to God's presence as a granted office. The whole dispute is about who may come how near.
16:6: A censer was a shallow metal fire-pan with a handle, used to carry live coals from the altar; incense was sprinkled on the coals to make fragrant smoke. Every household had cooking fire, but burning incense before God was restricted to priests, which is what makes the test in the next verse dangerous.
16:7: Offering incense inside the sanctuary was a priestly act only. Earlier in this same account (Leviticus 10) two of Aaron's own sons died for offering fire that had not been authorised. Moses is proposing that the 250 perform the act they claim the right to perform, and let the outcome settle it.
16:9: The distinction Moses draws is between two ranks. Levites did the physical work of the sanctuary (transporting it, guarding it, assisting) and lived off the people's tithes. Priests, a much smaller group descended from Aaron, alone handled the altar, the incense, and the blood of offerings. Korah already has the first and is asking for the second.
16:10: The priesthood meant the right to serve at the altar and inside the tent itself, and it belonged only to Aaron and his descendants. Every priest was a Levite, but only a small minority of Levites were priests. That is the line Korah wants to cross.
16:11: "Murmur" in the King James means to grumble or complain, usually as an undercurrent of muttered discontent rather than open confrontation. It is the standing word for Israel's behavior in the wilderness.
16:12: "We will not come up" is partly geography and partly insult: Moses is summoning them, and to refuse a summons was itself an act of defiance. The same verb runs through their reply: they refuse to "come up" to Moses, and accuse him of having brought them "up" out of Egypt.
16:13: "A land flowing with milk and honey" is the fixed phrase for the promised land of Canaan, milk from grazing herds, honey from wild bees, a land that feeds you without being fought for. Dathan and Abiram deliberately apply it to Egypt, the land of their slavery, which is the sting of the line.
16:14: "Put out the eyes of these men" is an idiom whose force is disputed. It may mean literally blinding, a punishment inflicted on rebels and captives, or figuratively hoodwinking someone, throwing dust in their eyes. The Hebrew supports either, and the ambiguity is in the original.
16:15: "Respect not their offering" means do not look on it with favor, do not accept it. The protest about the donkey is a standard formula by which a leader swore he had not used his position to enrich himself; Samuel makes the same claim in almost the same words. A donkey was the ordinary working animal of a poor household, so it stands for the smallest thing worth taking.
16:18: The King James "tabernacle of the congregation" translates what is more exactly the tent of meeting: the portable sanctuary at the center of the camp, where God was understood to meet with Moses. Its "door" was the entrance of the surrounding courtyard, the public boundary of sacred space.
16:19: "The glory of the LORD" refers to a visible phenomenon, described elsewhere as a blazing brightness within or behind the cloud that rested over the tent. It is a manifestation people could see and point at, not an abstract quality.
16:22: "The God of the spirits of all flesh" is word-for-word Hebrew. "Flesh" means living creatures in general, and "spirit" here is the breath that makes a body alive. The title means the God who gives and holds the life of every living thing, and it is chosen deliberately: Moses is appealing to the one who owns all these lives not to end them wholesale.
16:24: "Tabernacle" here does not mean the sanctuary tent. The Hebrew word simply means dwelling, and the King James uses the same English word for both the sacred tent and, as here, the ordinary tents where these men lived.
16:25: The elders were the older, respected men of Israel. They helped lead the people and settled arguments.
16:26: The warning against touching their possessions reflects a widely held understanding that guilt and its consequences could spread by contact, like contamination, to anyone or anything in physical association with the guilty. It is a practical instruction, not a comment on the bystanders' character.
16:27: "Gat up" is old English for got up and moved off. "Little children" translates a word for very young children, toddlers and infants.
16:29: "Visited" and "visitation" in the King James mean God's stepping in to deal with someone, for good or ill. The phrase means: if nothing happens to these men beyond what happens to everybody eventually.
16:30: Two words here have shifted meaning. "Quick" means alive, not fast, they go down still living. "The pit" translates Sheol, the underworld where the Hebrew Bible pictures all the dead as going, high and low alike; it is the grave conceived as a place beneath the earth, not a place of punishment. "A new thing" translates a verb used of creation: something brought into being that has not existed before.
16:32: "all the men that appertained unto Korah" means everyone attached to his household, including servants and dependents. Numbers 26:11 later records that Korah's own sons did not die, and several psalms in the Bible are still credited to "the sons of Korah" centuries afterward.
16:35: The same thing happens to Aaron's sons Nadab and Abihu in Leviticus 10, who die by fire while offering incense that God had not authorized. A reader of the time would hear the echo immediately.
16:37: Eleazar was Aaron's third son and eventually his successor as chief priest. He is sent instead of Aaron because contact with the dead made a priest ritually unfit for duty, and the chief priest was held to the strictest standard. "Hallowed" means made holy, the censers have been brought into the sacred sphere and can never be returned to ordinary use, whatever their owners did.
16:38: "Sinners against their own souls" means men whose offense cost them their own lives; "soul" in the King James Old Testament usually means the life or the person, not an immaterial part of them. The altar being plated is the large bronze altar of burnt offering that stood in the courtyard, built of wood with a metal skin.
16:39: "Brasen" means bronze. Brass as we know it did not exist yet; the King James uses the word for the copper-tin alloy the sanctuary vessels were made of.
16:40: "Stranger" in the King James does not mean a foreigner here. It means an outsider to the office, anyone not of Aaron's family, including full-blooded Israelites and even other Levites. The plated altar functions as a permanent physical marker of that boundary.
16:42: The cloud is the pillar of cloud that stood over the tent of meeting, understood as the sign of God's presence in the camp and the means by which the people knew when to travel and when to stay.
16:46: "Make an atonement" translates a ritual term meaning to purge, cover over, or ransom, an act performed to remove defilement and avert consequences already in motion. Atonement was ordinarily made with blood at the altar; incense used this way, as a barrier carried into a crowd, is unusual, and the scene has Aaron performing with a censer the very act the rebels died attempting.
16:48: "The plague was stayed" means it was halted, stopped in its tracks. "Plague" translates a word for a sudden blow or outbreak striking a population, not a specific named disease.
16:49: "beside" here means besides, in addition to. For scale, the censuses earlier in Numbers count over six hundred thousand fighting men, so 14,700 is a heavy loss but not the whole nation.

Read Numbers 16