Numbers 16:41

_BUT ON THE MORROW ALL THE CONGREGATION OF THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL MURMURED AGAINST MOSES AND AGAINST AARON, SAYING, YE HAVE KILLED THE PEOPLE OF THE LORD._ Ye have killed the people of the Lord. What a strange exhibition of popular prejudice and passion, to blame the leaders for saving the rebels! Yet Moses and Aaron interceded for the people-the high priest perilling his own life in doing good to that perverse race!...

41._But on the morrow all the congregation. _There is something more than monstrous in this madness of theirs. The conflagration was yet smoking, wherein God had appeared as the awful avenger of pride: the chasm in which the leaders of the rebellion had been swallowed up, must still have been almost before their eyes. God had commanded the plates to be molten, which might record that severe judgment through many succeeding ages. All had confessed by their alarm and hasty flight that there was danger lest they should themselves also be exposed to similar punishments. Yet, on the next day, am if they desired deliberately to provoke God, who was still, as it were, armed, they accuse God’s holy servants of having been the authors of the destruction, though they had never lifted a finger against their enemies. Was it in the power of Moses to command the earth to open? Could he draw down the f...

41-50 The gaping earth was scarcely closed, before the same sins are again committed, and all these warnings slighted. They called the rebels the people of the Lord; and find fault with Divine justice. The obstinacy of Israel notwithstanding the terrors of God's law, as given on mount Sinai, and the terrors of his judgments, shows how necessary the grace of God is to change men's hearts and lives. Love will do what fear cannot. Moses and Aaron interceded with God for mercy, knowing how great the provocation was. Aaron went, and burned incense between the living and the dead, not to purify the air, but to pacify an offended God. As one tender of the life of every Israelite, Aaron made all possible speed. We must render good for evil. Observe especially, that Aaron was a type of Christ. There is an infection of sin in the world, which only the cross and intercession of Jesus Christ can st...

Verse Numbers 16:41. _ON THE MORROW ALL THE CONGREGATION - MURMURED_] It is very likely that the people persuaded themselves that Moses and Aaron had used some _cunning_ in this business, and that the _earthquake_ and _fire_ were artificial; else, had they discerned the hand of God in this punishment, could they have dared the anger of the Lord in the very face of justice?...

EXPOSITION THE PLAGUE BEGUN AND AVERTED (Numbers 16:41-4). NUMBERS 16:41 YE HAVE KILLED THE PEOPLE OF THE LORD. They bad in truth forfeited their own lives, and Moses and Aaron had no more part in their death than St. Peter had in the death of Ananias and Sapphira. But it was easy to represent the matter as a personal conflict between two parties, in which the one had triumphed by destroying the other. In speaking of Korah and his company as the "people of the Lord," they meant to say that their lives were as sacred as the lives of Moses and Aaron, and the crime of taking them as great; they did not know, or did not heed, that their own imm

BUT ON THE MORROW,.... The day following the dreadful catastrophe, the earth swallowing up Dathan and Abiram, and all that belonged to them, the burning of Korah and the two hundred fifty men of his company: ALL THE CONGREGATION OF THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL MURMURED AGAINST MOSES, AND AGAINST AARON; not the princes and heads of the people only, but the whole body of them; though the above persons that murmured against them had but the day before been made such dreadful examples of divine vengeance. This is a most surprising instance of the corruption and depravity of human nature, of the blindness, hardness, and stupidity of the hearts of men, which nothing but the grace of God can remove; the images of the awful sights many of them had seen must be strong in their minds; the shrieks of the wretched creatures perishing must be as yet as it were in their ears; the smell of the fire was sca...

6. THE REBELLION OF KORAH CHAPTER 16 _ 1. The rebellion of Korah (Numbers 16:1)_ 2. The punishment (Numbers 16:20) 3. Eleazar and his work (Numbers 16:36) 4. The murmuring of the whole congregation (Numbers 16:41) 5. The staying of the plague (Numbers 16:44) The history is now resumed and we have the worst episode of Israel's history in the wilderness before us. We have seen and followed the steps downward and toward this fearful rebellion and the terrible punishment which followed. It s

NUMBERS 16. THE REBELLION OF KORAH, DATHAN, AND ABIRAM (JE and P). The narrative fuses together accounts of distinct revolts led by different individuals and inspired by different motives. The first (from JE) had for its instigators Dathan and Abiram, who are mentioned separately in Numbers 16:12; Numbers 16:25; Numbers 16:27; Deuteronomy 11:6, and who, as Reubenites (a tribe that once possessed the primacy, Genesis 49:3), disputed the civil authority of Moses (Numb

The people murmured at the death of Korah's company, and were punished by a plague, which ceased when Aaron made atonement with incense. In contrast to the action of the princes, the offering of incense by a duly qualified person is accepted by Jehovah....

ALL THE CONGREGATION OF THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL MURMURED— So exemplary a judgment, one should think, would have been sufficient to silence all future murmurings and discontent; yet it had a different effect upon this obstinate and intractable race of men. The very next day they ran upon Moses and Aaron with tumultuous outcries and accusations, charging them with the destruction of such a number of their brethren, the members of God's own church and peculiar nation: _ye have killed the people of the Lord._ Zealots of all kinds generally deem their own cause, however bad, the cause of God; and the friends and leaders of their party, _the people of the Lord,_ the favourites of heaven....