Korah, a Levite, rose up with Dathan and Abiram from Reuben and others. Two hundred fifty recognized leaders joined them against Moses. They said the whole congregation was holy and the LORD was among them, so Moses and Aaron had no right to exalt themselves above the assembly. Moses fell facedown when he heard them.
He told Korah and his company that God would show the next morning who belonged to him. They were to bring censers with fire and incense before the LORD. Moses reminded the Levites that they had been set apart for service at the tabernacle and asked why they were seeking the priesthood as well. Their gathering against Aaron was a gathering against the LORD.
Dathan and Abiram refused Moses’s summons. They accused him of bringing them from a land of milk and honey to die in the wilderness and said he had not given them fields or vineyards. Moses asked God not to accept their offering, saying he had taken no donkey from them and harmed no one.
Korah assembled the congregation at the tent entrance, and God’s glory appeared. God told Moses and Aaron to separate from the congregation so that it could be consumed at once. They fell facedown and pleaded that the sin of one man not bring wrath on all.
The congregation was told to move away from the tents of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. Moses warned them not to touch the belongings of these wicked men. Dathan and Abiram stood with their wives, children, and little ones at their tent doors. Moses said that if the ground opened and swallowed them alive, Israel would know that they had despised the LORD.
As he finished speaking, the ground split open beneath them. It swallowed them, their households, and those belonging to Korah with their possessions. The surrounding Israelites fled at their cries. Fire came from the LORD and consumed the two hundred fifty men offering incense.
God told Eleazar, Aaron’s son, to take the censers from the fire because they had become holy through being offered before the LORD. He hammered them into plating for the altar, a sign that no unauthorized person should come near to burn incense and become like Korah and his company.
The next day the whole congregation complained that Moses and Aaron had killed the LORD’s people. As they gathered, the cloud covered the tent and God’s glory appeared. Again God told Moses and Aaron to move away, and again they fell facedown.
Moses told Aaron to take his censer, put fire from the altar and incense in it, and hurry into the congregation to make atonement, because wrath had gone out and the plague had begun. Aaron ran into the midst of the people. He stood between the dead and the living and made atonement. The plague stopped. Fourteen thousand seven hundred died in the plague besides those who had died in Korah’s affair. Aaron returned to Moses at the entrance of the tent after the plague had stopped.