When truth is sacrificed to power.

What was wrong with Karach and his fellow rebels?

On the face of it, what they said was true and principled.

You've gone too far, they said to Moses and Aaron.

The whole community is holy, every one of them, and God is with them.

Why then are you setting yourselves above God's congregation?

They had a point. God had sovereign the people to become Mamlach had Khanim Vagai Kadoosh,

a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation, that is, a kingdom every one of whose members

was in some sense a priest and a nation every one of whom was holy.

Moses himself had said,

Um, me, you ten for all God's people were prophets,

that he would place his spirit upon them.

These are radically egalitarian sentiments.

Why then was there a hierarchy with Moses's leader and

Aaron as high priest? What was wrong was that even at the outset it was obvious that Korach

was duplicitous. There was a clear disconnection between what he claimed to want and what he really

sought.

Karach did not seek a society in which everyone was the same, everyone a priest. He was not, as he sounded, a utopian anarchist seeking to abolish hierarchy altogether.

He was instead mounting a leadership challenge.

As Moses later words to him indicate, he wanted to be

high priest himself. He was Moses and Aaron's cousin, son of Yitzha, brother of Moses and Aaron's father,

Umram. He felt that it was unfair that both leadership positions had gone to a single family

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