If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.
18 February. Numbers 16-17
The “Korah rebellion” is one of those shocking tales found in the Old Testament when God, despite the pleadings of a holy man (Moses in this instance) kills large numbers of people – just as most of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah were killed despite Abraham’s bargaining with God. The rebel leaders, along with their wives and children who presumably were innocent in the matter, are swallowed up by the earth, and 14,700 people are then killed by an unidentified plague before Aaron’s prayers stopped it spreading (for comparison, about 11,000 innocent Africans died in the 2015 Ebola plague).
But what was their sin? At one level it was an attempted political coup – Moses’ argument “is it not enough that you have been selected” (as servants in the tabernacle) was met with the ironic reply “is it not enough that you have brought us out into the desert and failed to bring us to the promised land?” (paraphrased). And political coups either succeed, or if they fail then inevitably the leaders of the uprising are killed.
But this being the Bible, there is also a theological point. God had appointed the descendants of Aaron to be priests – the highest calling – and the tribe of Levi to serve in the tabernacle. But a Levite and three members of a separate tribe (Reuben) headed this rebellion, which Moses interpreted as their desire to be counted as equal to the priests. The severe punishments which followed were supposed to be appropriate to this sin. The miraculous budding of Aaron’s staff in the following chapter is then seen as confirmation that his descendants alone counted as true priests.
Nowadays we have other ways of selecting church leaders than tribal allegiance, and of course different Christian groups will have their different ways of doing this. But the mainstream denominations (Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican) retain the concept of the ‘orders’ of Bishops, Priests, Deacons, and licensed lay workers, each of whom are allowed to perform certain functions which lower orders may not, and for a lay person to perform the sacraments as if they were a priest is still considered a breach of church discipline. If for example I were to baptise a child, or perform a marriage service, or hear confession using the words of a priest, I would be answerable to the Bishop. But I do hope the ground would not swallow me up!