The word must be,
Obey or die. As for any cruelty in putting Korah, Dathan, and
Abiram to death, it was worth the death of a hundred such--or a
thousand--to preserve the great and glorious nation of the Jews to
be the teachers of the world.
Now this Korah, Dathan, and Abiram rebel. They rebel against Moses
about a question of the priesthood. It really matters little to us
what that question was--it was a question of Moses' law, which, of
course, is now done away. Only remember this, that these men were
princes--great feudal noblemen, as we should say; and that they
rebelled on the strength of their rank and their rights as noblemen
to make laws for themselves and for the people; and that the mob of
their dependents seem to have been inclined to support them.
Surely if Moses had executed martial law on them with his own hand,
he would have been as perfectly justified as a captain of a ship of
war or a general of an army would be now.
But he did not do so. And why? Because MOSES did not bring the
people out of Egypt. Moses was not their king. GOD brought them
out of Egypt. God was their king. That was the lesson which they
had to learn, and to teach other nations also.
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