The day after Korah's company was swallowed by the earth, the people of Israel accused Moses and Aaron of murder. God sent a plague. And Aaron did something no other priest would ever do: he ran straight into the space between the living and the dead, holding a censer, and stopped the angel of destruction with incense.
The Targum Jonathan adds context to the aftermath of Korah's rebellion. Eleazar the priest collected the 250 bronze censers from among the charred remains and hammered them into plates covering the altar. The Targum specifies the lesson: any commoner who presumed to offer incense would be punished "not indeed with a death like that of Korah and his company, by being burned by fire, and being swallowed up by the earth, but punished with leprosy." The precedent was set by what God did to Moses at the burning bush: "Put thy hand into thy bosom, and his hand was stricken with leprosy."
The next day, the congregation gathered against Moses and Aaron "to kill them." They looked at the Tabernacle and saw the Cloud of Glory covering it. God appeared and threatened to consume the entire congregation instantly. Moses told Aaron to grab a censer, fill it with altar fire and incense, and run—because "a destruction like that which consumed them in Horeb, whose name is Burning, has begun by commandment to kill."
Aaron "stood in the midst, between the dead and the living with the censer, and interceded in prayer; and the plague was restrained." Fourteen thousand seven hundred had already died.
To settle the priesthood question permanently, God ordered twelve rods placed in the Tabernacle, one for each tribe. Overnight, Aaron's rod "had germinated; it had shot forth branches, blossomed with flowers, and, in the same night, produced and ripened almonds." The Israelites' final cry was bleak: "Some of us have been consumed with flaming fire; some have been swallowed up by the earth. Are we not doomed to destruction?"