22 myths
Moses had set the incense test for morning. Korah spent that night building a coalition larger than Moses had ever faced before.
After Korah's rebellion, Aaron ran into the plague with altar fire and incense. He stopped the Angel of Death at the boundary between the living and the dead.
Korah had once held the keys to Pharaoh's treasure houses. He wanted the altar too. Moses gave him one night to take it back.
Dathan and Abiram would not leave their tent doorways. They stood there and slandered Moses, so Moses asked God for a mouth in the ground, and got one.
Korah takes no sword. He takes leaders with persuasion, counting Amram's sons against Uzziel's, until the earth raises bars like a castle.
Two hundred fifty men want the altar by nightfall. Moses buys them until morning, hoping sleep will unmake a rebellion.
Korah came at Moses through the family gate. When the ground finally tilted it took his tents, his flocks, and a needle he had lent out.
Moses warns Korah that only one man will walk from the pans. Fire and earth answer, the people cry we perish, and Israel later denies Aaron's death.
The looms ran for days and the wool came off the color of the sky just before dark. Korah ran the cloth through his fingers. He knew what one thread was worth.
Korah did not start his rebellion with a speech. He started it with a story about a poor widow that made every listener hate Moses on the spot.
Korah told the crowd about a widow whose field and flock went to Aaron piece by piece. Every law he cited was real. The widow was not.
Korah saw Samuel shining in his bloodline and read the vision as permission. He reached for the fire-pan, and the fire reached back.
A Bedouin showed a Talmudic sage the fissures where the earth swallowed Korah alive. Every thirty days Korah surfaces and cries out that Moses was right.
Moses walked to warn Datan and Aviram before the earth opened. They would not come out to meet him. He gave the warning and left them to the ground.
Aaron's priesthood was bracketed by two catastrophes, the Golden Calf and Korah's rebellion. Both threatened him. Both failed to destroy him.
Korah recruited followers with a story about a widow and her one field. Moses took the first fruits, then the tithe, then the wool off her two sheep.
Psalm 45 opens with lilies, and the rabbis heard a rescue story: a woman spends herself to pull three condemned men out of the machinery of death.
Korah forced his way toward the altar and sank, while his sons were brought near the courts he tried to storm.
Three hundred mules carried only the keys to Korah's storerooms. The rabbis trace that fortune to Joseph and ask what it means when the richest man rebels.
Korah looked into the future and saw Samuel and twenty-four Temple singers coming out of his own line. He decided God would never let their father die.
After Korah's rebellion, twelve tribal rods lay in the Tabernacle overnight. By morning one had burst into almond blossoms and ripe fruit.
The earth opened beneath their father and they were left suspended on a ledge inside Gehinnom (afterlife of judgment), and from there they composed the psalms.
