Scholars and close readers of Numbers 16 have long noticed that the text as it now stands is a composite of two different and once separate rebellion stories, each with their own individual characters, motives, divine punishment, vocabulary, style, and theological emphasis.
Both of these stories additionally exhibit unique themes, vocabulary, and agendas found in other passages attributed to these same textual traditions. Here we’re looking at a story from the Yahwist tradition and another from the later Priestly tradition, both of which were later edited together to give us the text as it now stands.
Compare other places in the Pentateuch where a later redactor cut-and-pasted together 2 once separate versions of the same story from the Yahwist and Priestly textual traditions in contradictions #14-18 (2 Flood stories), #72-73 (2 Joseph stories), and #120-122 (2 Crossing of the Red Sea stories).
One of the rebellion stories in Numbers 16 is about the Reubenites’ questioning and criticism of Moses’ authority over them and his inability thus far to bring the people to the promised land (16:13-14). This coup is led by Dathan, Abiram, and On—all from the tribe of Reuben, and may actually hint at a real historic conflict between the tribe of Reuben and other Israelite tribes, at least as perceived by the Judean scribes who wrote this story. At any event, for their disobedience and questioning of Moses’ authority, Yahweh punishes them by opening up the earth and swallowing “them and all their households” (16:32). You can still read the whole original Yahwist story by reading Num 16:1b-2a, 12-14, 25-26, 27b-32a, and 33-34 together.
The other story, now woven together with this story of Reubenite rebellion, describes how a specific family of the tribe of Levi, the Kohathites questioned Aaron’s (the Aaronids’) prerogative to be Yahweh’s sole and only priests: “You seek the priesthood as well?”(16:10). The task to prove that Yahweh had indeed only chosen those from the seed of Aaron to be his priests (although see #152), is to have Aaron and Korah and his 250 men present incense to Yahweh in the Tabernacle, and to see which incense burner Yahweh accepts. But before Korah and his cohorts are even able to enter Yahweh’s Tabernacle, Yahweh consumes them all with fire: “And fire had gone out from Yahweh and consumed the 250 people offering the incense” (16:35).
As seen elsewhere in our survey of this Priestly source, it is no coincidence that in a text written by Aaronid priests Yahweh is presented legitimating the sole rule of the Aaronids on the one hand and on the other hand violently consuming all non-Aaronid Levites who approach the Tent of Meeting or who attempt to perform any priestly functions. In other words, as I’ve stressed elsewhere, this is what ancient literature was—propaganda legitimating through divine sanction the ideology of its writers! It is yet another example of this elite priestly guild forging an archaic story wherein Israel’s god, Yahweh, condemns all non-Aaronid Levites who challenge their rule and conversely is presented choosing only the Aaronids as his priestly anointeds. Since according to this ideology only the Aaronids can approach Yahweh, Korah and his 250 chieftains are immediately consumed by Yahweh’s fire and die. “No outsider, one who is not from Aaron’s seed, will come forward to burn incense in front of Yahweh” (Num 17:5).
We have seen this Aaronid ideology divinely sanctioned elsewhere in this same Aaronid written Priestly tradition. In Numbers 3-4 the role of all non-Aaronid Levites is laid out, including that of the Kohathite family of Levites, where it is expressly stated that they are not priests, but are to minister to the Aaronid priesthood and the components of the Tabernacle (see #220). And Numbers 7-8 again speak of the election of the Aaronids only as Yahweh’s anointed priests and all non-Aaronid Levites as the mere servants to the Aaronid priesthood (#221).
In other words, these stories exemplify what ancient literature is and how it was often used. Its “moral legislation”—that Yahweh will slaughter any non-Aaronid Levite that challenged the Aaronids’ authority as sole priests, approached Yahweh’s tabernacle or directly touched any of its components—is not some objective moral with a supernatural origin, but rather a carefully crafted lesson created by elite Aaronid priests whose purpose was to endorse, legitimate, and safeguard their own authority and ideology, and often against the views and claims of rivalry priestly groups, such as the Kohathites or Levites in general (#152), by using the deity as their spokesperson. This is what we learn when we objectively study these ancient texts that were later compiled together to form “the Book.” This is what I’ve been touting as being honest to the texts, their authors, and the hows and whys of their composition as products of their unique historical contexts and authorial beliefs and agendas.