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The Beginning of the End
of fields and vineyards. Will you put out the eyes of these men? We
will not come up!”
By saying this, they declared that they would no longer submit to
be led around like blind men, now toward Canaan, and now toward
the wilderness, to fit Moses’ ambitious plans. They portrayed him
as the worst tyrant and power-grabber. They blamed him for their
exclusion from Canaan.
Moses did not try to defend himself. He solemnly appealed to
God in the presence of the congregation and begged Him to be his
judge.
The Great Test: Whom Would God Acknowledge?
The next day the two hundred fifty princes, with Korah leading
them, presented themselves with their censers, while the people
gathered to await the result. It was not Moses who assembled the
congregation to see the defeat of Korah and his company. The rebels,
in their blind judgment, had called them together to witness their
victory. A large part of the congregation openly sided with Korah.
Korah had left the assembly to join Dathan and Abiram when
Moses, with the seventy elders, went down with a last warning to
the men who had refused to come to him. At God’s direction, Moses
told the people, “Depart now from the tents of these wicked men!
Touch nothing of theirs, lest you be consumed in all their sins.” The
people obeyed, for a sense of approaching judgment rested on all.
The chief rebels saw themselves abandoned by those whom they had
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deceived, but they stood their ground with their families, defying the
divine warning.
Moses now declared in the hearing of the congregation, “By this
you shall know that the Lord has sent me to do all these works, for I
have not done them of my own will. If these men die naturally like
all men ... then the Lord has not sent me. But if the Lord creates a
new thing, and the earth opens its mouth and swallows them up with
all that belongs to them, and they go down alive into the pit, then
you will understand that these men have rejected the Lord.”
As he finished speaking, the solid earth split open and the rebels
went down alive into the pit, with all their goods, and “they perished