Today, I am reading and commenting on  Numbers 16-18.

My first thought when reading this was that we had just had the negative consequences of those who refused to follow Moses’ direction and now, here we have some other people challenging his authority?  Then I thought about the repeated times in my lifetime when people have seen an idea fail, badly, and as soon as the dust settles begin advocating for it again.  But that, in and of itself, is not what this passage is about.  So, I decided to look at what was wrong with what Korah and his allies wanted.  Korah claims to be advocating on behalf of the entire people of Israel.  He claims that he wants to establish a system where all of the people are equal before God, as opposed to Moses “lording it” over them.  However, if we look at his group, we see people who have risen to positions of minor power uniting to overthrow Moses in the name of “the people” and seize power for themselves.  We see this pattern repeated time and again throughout history: leaders arise who claim to be opposing the “tyrannical” government on behalf of the people, but really only seek power for themselves.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.