Fitting fates

B"H

Bamidbar (Numbers) Ch. 16:31-32 reads:

ויהי ככלתו לדבר את כל הדברים האלה ותבקע האדמה אשר תחתיהם
ותפתח הארץ את פיה ותבלע אתם

Loosely translated:
And when [Moshe] finished speaking all these words and earth split open below them [=Korach and his gang] and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them...

Interestingly enough, the rest of Korach's rebellious gang met its demise differently. We find that 16:35 reads:
ואש יצאה מאת ה' ותאכל את החמשים ומאתים איש מקריבי הקטרת

Loosely translated:
And they fire came from Hashem and consumed the two hundred and fifty men, those who sacrificed incense.


The earth opening its mouth and swallowing Korach and his immediate gang, when put in contrast with the rest of the gang (250 people) who was bringing incense who were burnt up brings up and interesting point:

The whole dispute Korach had with Moshe was as a result of the tragedy with the 10 spies: Korach recognized all along that Moshe is above and beyond everyone spiritually so there was no dispute at first.

However when the spies came back with their report they were rebuked (and indeed punished): while their intentions may have been good, the end does not justify the means. The spies were unwilling to live in the mundane physical world and engage in mundane physical deeds. This was at the root of their desire to stay in the desert. While in the desert they were subjected to constant divine providence: the needed not worry about food (they had manah), they needed not worry about water (they had Miriam's portable well), their clothing grew on them and the path was flattened and "sanitized" by the clouds of glory. Indeed their lived a miraculous life and could be totally immersed in Torah study without a worry in the world.

They reasoned that this miraculous lifestyle is something they would have to give-up upon arriving in the land of Israel. All of a sudden there's something called Mortgage that gets in the way. They will need to work the land. They'll have to go to the market place, etc... In other words, they realized that they'll have to live a mundane life.

So the net effect is that they gave a skewed report with some interpretive comments about the land of Israel, hoping that the whole nation will give-up the idea of entering the land, and they'd be able to continue this supernatural lifestyle in the desert, indefinitely. They succeeded convincing a great majority of this skewed opinion.

They were punished because although ideally a person should aim to study Torah non-stop, nonetheless Torah requires us to be involved in the mundane existence while keeping a finger on our Jewish pulse, and bringing Torah into the mundane existence in order to elevate it to holiness. Korach took this too far though:

When Korach saw the punishment being executed, he said to himself: "At first I thought that existence should be aimed at purely spiritual pursuits and I had no objections to Moshe. But now that I see that the spies were wrong (on the count of spiritual pursuit) and we should also engage in the physical mundane world, Moshe is no better than the rest of us! So, I'm going to go there and get my fair share of leadership!"

So, Korach was more interested in the physical deeds, while the rest of the gang that was offering incests was obviously more interested in the spiritual. Since Korach's argument was more on the mundane physical plain he was swallowed by the earth (in a downward direction.) However since the others' argument was on a spiritual plain, they were consumed by heavenly fire (in an upward direction.)

Everyone got what they were looking for: Korach went down, the other 250 men burned up, the rest of the nation, which agreed that desert life is preferable lingered around the desert for the next 40 years.

What a fine example of how Hashem conducts this world measure-for-measure with how we conduct ourselves.

Good shabbos!