Why Korah's Name Lives On in a Psalm About Hatred

The Psalmist does not say: I dislike certain people. He says, with full force, I hate the congregation of evildoers, and will not sit with the wicked (Psalm 26:5). That is a striking thing for a text of prayer to preserve. And the rabbis, who never let a striking thing pass without examination, asked the obvious question: which congregation? Who was so bad that the word hate was not too strong?

The answer in Midrash Tehillim, the collection of rabbinic interpretations on Psalms compiled across several centuries of late antiquity, is immediate: Korah. The congregation of evildoers is the congregation of Korah, the man who gathered 250 leaders and brought them to the tent of meeting to challenge Moses and Aaron, and who was swallowed alive into the earth along with his household (Numbers 16).

What Made Korah's Gathering Different from Every Other Gathering

The Hebrew word for congregation, edah, is specific. It means an assembled body with a defined purpose. Israel is an edah. The court of a king is an edah. But the 3,205 texts of the midrash-aggadah tradition return repeatedly to the distinction between gatherings that serve heaven and gatherings that serve the ambitions of the one who called them. Korah called a gathering. But it was not called for the sake of God or Torah or Israel. It was called for the sake of Korah's desire for the priesthood.

This is what Midrash Tehillim zeroes in on. The congregation of evildoers is not merely a congregation that contains evil people. It is a congregation whose founding purpose is crooked. Korah assembled men of standing, men of ability, the text says, representatives of the people, and he directed them toward a goal that was not theirs but his. He used the language of shared grievance, telling the crowd that all the assembly is holy and Moses and Aaron have taken too much upon themselves. But the grievance was manufactured. The goal was personal.

Solomon Knew the Pattern Before Korah's Name Was Famous

Midrash Tehillim connects the Psalm not only backward to Korah but across to Proverbs, the wisdom literature attributed to Solomon. The verse it draws on, the way of a man may be upright in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart (Proverbs 21:2), points to exactly what made Korah's congregation dangerous. Each of the 250 leaders thought he was righteous. Each thought he was standing for a legitimate principle. Korah had told them so. And in their own eyes, they were.

The Legends of the Jews, Louis Ginzberg's monumental compilation of midrashic and talmudic traditions assembled in the early twentieth century from sources spanning the first through twelfth centuries, adds a detail that sharpens the picture: Korah's wife was the one who lit the match. She told Korah that Moses had given the best of everything to his own family, that the honors of the priesthood were a private arrangement dressed up as divine command. She planted the suspicion. Korah built the congregation around it.

Why David Could Not Sit with Them

Psalm 26 is assigned by tradition to David. And David's refusal to sit with the congregation of evildoers is not presented in the Psalm as a calm preference. It is presented as a statement of identity. I have hated the congregation of evildoers is followed by I wash my hands in innocence, O Lord, and go around your altar. The ritual innocence and the moral distance are the same act, expressed twice.

The 2,921 texts of Midrash Rabbah contain a sustained meditation on what it means to be gathered in the name of heaven versus gathered in the name of ambition. The teaching of Mishnah Avot, itself cited and elaborated throughout the midrash collections, puts it plainly: every assembly that is for the sake of heaven will endure; every assembly that is not for the sake of heaven will not endure. Korah's assembly is the paradigm case. It did not endure. It was swallowed.

But here is what the rabbis noticed: the Psalm was not written after Korah was forgotten. It was written after Korah was remembered. The very fact that the Psalmist needs to declare hatred for the congregation of evildoers means that the congregation of evildoers remains a present temptation. You might be invited to join. You might find the invitation appealing. The men around you might be impressive, their grievances might sound legitimate, the leader might speak in the language of equality and shared honor.

The Sons of Korah Became Psalm-Writers Anyway

There is one more thing Midrash Tehillim does not allow us to ignore. The Psalms are organized by authorship, and a significant number of them are attributed not to David but to the Sons of Korah. Psalms 42 through 49, and several others, bear that heading. The sons survived. They repented while still in the pit. The earth opened and swallowed their father but they held back from following him all the way down, and they were preserved.

The congregation of evildoers is named and condemned. But the children of the man who built it became the musicians and poets of the Temple, the authors of some of the most beloved prayers in the tradition. Midrash Aggadah reads this as a principle: the gathering is not the man, and the man is not his children. Korah's name becomes a byword for destructive ambition. His sons' names become a byword for the possibility of turning back, even from inside the pit, even at the last possible moment.

The Psalm says: I will not sit with the congregation of evildoers. The tradition behind it says: here is why, here is who they were, and here is what happened to those among them who chose differently while there was still time to choose.