Korah 5786
What’s in a Name?
This week we are reading Parashat Korah (that’s קֹ֫רַח qóraḥ, with a guttural ḥet at the end of his name, not just an -ah), Numbers 16–18. Ordinarily he’s considered the villain of this week’s story, “the Korah rebellion.” Modern scholars and traditional ones all have a lot to say about this story, but this week I’m going to take us in a completely different direction: parshiyot named after people.
There are relatively few of them. In Genesis there is just one:
Parashat Noah (make sure to say נֹ֫חַ too with a ḥet), Gen 6:9–11:32, the second one in the book of Genesis after Parashat Bereshit, the story of creation. Parashat Noah is indeed (mostly) the story of Noah and the Flood. Read about that in much more detail here.
In Exodus as well, there is just one:
Parashat Yitro, named after Jethro, Exodus 18–20. Exodus 18 is indeed about Jethro’s interaction with his son-in-law Moses, but the real subject of the parashah, comprising Exodus 19–20, is “the Ten Commandments” — in air quotes because this is not where they are numbered as “ten” and because they are never (in Hebrew) called “commandments.”
Numbers has several, including two in a row:
Parashat Korah.
Parashat Balak, Num 22:2–25:9.
Parashat Pinhas (that’s another ḥet), Num 25:10–30:1.
Parashat Balak is the story, not of Balak (who’s really a secondary character there) but of Balaam, the famous prophet. Parashat Pinhas is even less about Pinhas, who is mentioned only in the first paragraph there (and in the last paragraph of Parashat Balak).
And those are the only people who have a parashah named after them. No Parashat Avraham for Abraham, none for Isaac, for Jacob, or for Joseph, not even a Parashat Moshe, though Moses is mentioned in every parashah outside of Genesis but one. No Parashat Aaron or Parashat Miriam either.
The exception that proves the rule — that is, as Ambrose Bierce explained in The Devil’s Dictionary, that “probes” it, tests it — is Gen 23:1–25:18, Parashat Hayyei Sarah, “the life of Sarah,” which begins with Sarah’s death.
That, of course, is because it is named — like all the parshiyot — for the first significant words in the parashah. Our parashah too does indeed begin with Korah’s name. The first Hebrew words are וַיִּקַּ֣ח קֹ֔רַח va-yiqqaḥ qóraḥ ‘Korah took’. What exactly is meant by “took” we can discuss another year. The point is that this parashah is named Korah not because it’s about his rebellion but because his name is the first really distinctive word of the parashah.
Again, when we get two weeks from now to Parashat Balak, we’ll read:
Num 22:2 Balak son of Zippor saw all that Israel had done to the Amorites.
Once again, due to Biblical Hebrew’s VSO (verb-subject-object) narrative pattern, in Hebrew his name is the second word of the verse: וַיַּ֥רְא בָּלָ֖ק va-yar balaq. If that parashah had been written so that the first verse of it said “Balaam son of Beor” saw what had happened to the Israelites, we would call the parashah Parashat Bil’am, matching his name in Hebrew, בִּלְעָם. (Like so many biblical names, his English name comes from the Greek transliteration: Βαλααμ.)
Because the prophecies of Balaam make up such a large portion of that section of the book of Numbers, we would think the parashah was named after him when really it would merely have been named that way because his name would have been the first distinctive word in the opening verse. Since that didn’t happen it is named Balak, though everybody understands that Balak is no more than a supporting actor.
In our parashah, as in the hypothetical Parashat Bil’am or the real Parashat Noah, we might easily conclude that the parashah is about the Korah rebellion. Yet Korah is not the only one named even in the very first verse of the parashah:
Num 16:1 Now Korah, son of Izhar son of Kohath son of Levi, betook himself, along with Dathan and Abiram sons of Eliab, and On son of Peleth—descendants of Reuben— 2 to rise up against Moses, together with two hundred and fifty Israelites, chieftains of the community, chosen in the assembly, men of repute. 3 They combined against Moses and Aaron and said to them, “You have gone too far!” [NJPS]
V. 3, with its plural verbs, demonstrates clearly that all 254 of the “chieftains” are in it together. The NJPS translation singling out Korah is perhaps based on the singular verb that we saw as the very first Hebrew word of the parashah. Yet, as the grammars make clear, when there’s a compound subject — and certainly in a case like this where there’s a long stretch of words after Korah, separating him from the rest of the compound subject — the verb often matches just the first element of that compound subject.
So it really would be quite accurate to translate Num 16:1 this way:
Num 16:1 Now Korah (son of Izhar son of Kohath son of Levi), Dathan and Abiram (sons of Eliab), and On (son of Peleth) betook themselves …
This episode was a much bigger thing than “the Korah rebellion.”
The academic scholars (of whom I am one, at least when I’m wearing my other hat) agree that there are two different stories in here, one about Korah’s rebellion and one about Dathan and Abiram. (Start here if you are interested in learning more about that.) As the two stories are woven together in the book of Numbers, this is “Korah’s rebellion,” and Dathan and Abiram are pushed off to the side.
Now let’s go down to Numbers 26, where there’s a second census of the Israelites after the one at the beginning of the book of Numbers, the one taken shortly after the Israelites have entered the wilderness. By Numbers 26, the Israelites are getting ready to leave the wilderness; they’re being counted before they enter the land. In this passage we get not just the numbers but also the genealogy, the descendants of the ancestral clans:
Num 26:5 Reuben, Israel’s first-born. Descendants of Reuben: [Of] Enoch, the clan of the Enochites; of Pallu, the clan of the Palluites; 6 of Hezron, the clan of the Hezronites; of Carmi, the clan of the Carmites. 7 Those are the clans of the Reubenites. The persons enrolled came to 43,730.
Num 26:8 Born to Pallu: Eliab. 9 The sons of Eliab were Nemuel, and Dathan and Abiram. These are the same Dathan and Abiram, chosen in the assembly, who agitated against Moses and Aaron as part of Korah’s band when they agitated against the LORD. 10 Whereupon the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up with Korah—when that band died, when the fire consumed the two hundred and fifty men—and they became an example. 11 The sons of Korah, however, did not die.
See the Numbers volume of the Commentators’ Bible for the light that v. 9 here may be shedding on our story. But … what are the sons of Korah (who was a descendant of Levi, not of Reuben) doing here? Abraham ibn Ezra explains:
They are mentioned here in connection with the tribe of Reuben to contrast them to the sons of Dathan and Abiram, whose grown sons and minor children alike did die in the Korah incident. We see that what Dathan and Abiram did was worse than what Korah did.
So it seems that Numbers 16 is not the story of the Korah Rebellion but of the Dathan and Abiram rebellion. Sometimes it’s a good idea to elbow yourself to the front of the line and get a parashah named after you, and sometimes it’s a really bad idea.
Next week, an animal that’s actually been in the news recently: the famous “red heifer.” See you then.
