Numbers 16:36-50

The Lord created another visual aid to remind the Israelites that offering incense was a ministry of the priests only. The priests overlaid the altar of burnt offerings with a second layer of bronze that they hammered out of the rebels’ censers (cf. Exodus 27:2). [Note: See Jonathan Magonet, "The Korah Rebellion," Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 24 (October 1982):3-25.]

"As we think about the notion of the ’holy,’ we recognize that things are made holy in Scripture, not because people are holy, but because the things are presented to the Lord, who is holy. Since these wicked men presented their censers to the Lord, the censers are holy, despite the men’s own wickedness." [Note: Allen, p. 843.]

God’s judgment of Korah’s company did not cause the congregation as a whole to submit to God’s will through Moses and Aaron. The people charged Moses and Aaron with killing their leaders (Numbers 16:41). On the contrary, Moses had been responsible for God sparing the nation through his intercession on several occasions. The fact that the people called Korah’s company "the LORD’s people" (Numbers 16:41) shows how they failed to appreciate what it really meant to be His people (cf. Numbers 11:29; Judges 5:11; 1 Samuel 2:24; 2 Samuel 1:12; 2 Samuel 6:21; 2 Kings 9:6; Ezekiel 36:20; Zephaniah 2:10).

Moses and Aaron fell on their faces when they heard God’s intention to judge the whole congregation with death (Numbers 16:43; Numbers 16:45). Since incense symbolizes prayer in Scripture (cf. Exodus 30:8; Psalms 141:2; Luke 1:10; Revelation 5:8; Revelation 8:3-4), Aaron apparently moved among the people interceding for them. The plague (Numbers 16:46) was obviously a divine judgment involving sudden death, but more than this Moses did not reveal. A total of 14,700 people died (Numbers 16:49).

Why did Moses not intercede again here?

"All the motives which he had hitherto pleaded, in his repeated intercession that this evil congregation might be spared, were now exhausted. He could not stake his life for the nation, as at Horeb (Exodus 32:32), for the nation had rejected him. He could not longer appeal to the honour of Jehovah among the heathen, seeing that the Lord, even when sentencing the rebellious race to fall in the desert, had assured him that the whole earth should be filled with His glory (chap. Exodus 14:20 sqq.). Still less could he pray to God that He would not be wrathful with all for the sake of one or a few sinners, as in chap. Exodus 16:22, seeing that the whole congregation had taken part with the rebels. In this condition of things there was but one way left of averting the threatened destruction of the whole nation, namely, to adopt the means which the Lord Himself had given to His congregation, in the high-priestly office, to wipe away their sins, and recover the divine grace which they had forfeited through sin,-viz. the offering of incense which embodied the high-priestly prayer, and the strength and operation of which were not dependent on the sincerity and earnestness of subjective faith, but had a firm and immovable foundation in the objective force of the divine appointment." [Note: Keil and Delitzsch, 3:112.]

Another explanation is that the writer did not record Moses’ prayer of intercession and God’s reply in the text in this case.