The quarrel between Korah and Moses began with a poor woman and her single ewe-lamb. She fed the lamb from her own bread and let it drink from her own cup. When she sheared its wool, Aaron the priest came and took it, claiming the firstling of the fleece as his priestly due. The woman ran to Korah and wept. Korah confronted Aaron, but Aaron refused to bend the law. When the lamb bore its first offspring, Aaron took that too. The woman came to Korah again, broken. Korah used her grief as kindling for a rebellion.
According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle translated by Moses Gaster in 1899, Korah gathered 250 leaders and challenged Moses and Aaron's authority. Moses proposed a test: each man would bring a fire-pan with incense before God, and God would choose. The next morning the earth answered for God. The ground split open beneath Korah's feet. He, his household, and all his followers plunged into the chasm alive. The earth swallowed them whole and sealed shut above them.
The chronicle then turns to Balaam and Balak, king of Moab. Balak hired Balaam to curse the Israelites, but every time Balaam opened his mouth to curse, blessings came out instead. God literally reversed the words on Balaam's tongue. Humiliated, Balaam offered Balak a darker strategy: send the Moabite women to seduce the Israelite men and lead them into idol worship. The plan worked. The Israelites sinned with the daughters of Moab and bowed to their gods.
A plague struck the camp, killing 24,000 men. The priests and elders sat weeping, paralyzed. Then Phineas saw Zimri brazenly parading with a Midianite woman in front of the entire congregation. Phineas grabbed a spear from Moses' hand, chased Zimri, and drove the spear through both of them. The plague stopped. God rewarded Phineas with an eternal covenant of priesthood, because one man's decisive action saved the nation when everyone else froze.