Parashat Korach - Fourth Aliyah
Read the biblical text and try to understand it on your own, before reading the commentary.
The rebellion has been crushed. The earth swallowed Korach and his company, and fire consumed those who brought the incense. But the people are still not calm. The Holy One, blessed be He, in unfathomable pain, commands again: “Heromu mitoch ha’edah hazot, va’achaleh otam keraga” (Get away from this congregation, that I may consume them in a moment, verse 10).
Wrath goes out from before Adonai, and the plague begins to strike. A wave of death, silent, terrifying, blind. And then something no less than miraculous happens.
Aharon, the very one they rebelled against and complained about, runs himself into the camp, carrying the incense, with the power of life in his hands. “Vaya’amod bein hametim uvein hachayim, vate’atzar hamagefah” (He stood between the dead and the living, and the plague was stopped, verse 13).
Rashi on this verse uncovers two layers in the story. The first: “He seized the angel and held him against his will. The angel said to him: ‘Let me carry out my mission.’ He said to him: ‘Moshe commanded me to hold you back.’” Aharon did not only place incense. He seized the Angel of Death and held him in place, arguing against him in the power of Moshe’s mission from the Almighty.
The second layer of Rashi is even sharper. Why specifically with incense? “Because Israel had been slandering and murmuring about the incense, saying it is the poison of death. By it Nadav and Avihu died, by it the two hundred and fifty were burned. The Holy One, blessed be He, said: ‘You will see that it is what stops a plague, and the sin is what kills.’” The incense that seemed to kill yesterday is the very one that saves today. The instrument does not change. Only the contact with it.
And then the closing words, quiet and decisive: “Vayashov Aharon el Moshe el petach ohel mo’ed, vehamagefah ne’etzarah” (Aharon returned to Moshe at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, and the plague was stopped, verse 15). Fourteen thousand seven hundred died, besides those who died over the matter of Korach. But the plague was stopped, and all of it because of the one they had supposedly rebelled against the day before. Aharon ran into the heart of the danger not to take revenge, but to atone.