Between one crisis and the next, the second Census of the Book of Numbers takes place, 38 years after the first one. It’s a whole new generation, with 601,730 men counted, ready for battle. Not included, again, are women, children and those not directly from the 12 tribes, traveling along. Thrown into the long list of statistics are a few curious clues as to why this is not just a roll call for military service but an acknowledgment that so more than spreadsheets is what’s at the heart of this ongoing enterprise. Although almost the entire original generation of Hebrews who left Egypt are already dead, included in this chapter are the names of a few of them who not only not died yet - they may never die at all.
There’s Moses of course, lone standing not what his siblings are dead. Joshua and Caleb, two of the twelve spies who did not speak against the Promised Land Project are specifically mentioned as destined to live and lead the people after Moses is gone. There’s Serach, Asher’s daughter, whose epic saga we wrote about back in Genesis: She is the only woman named in this list by name, apparently still alive hundreds of years later and will continue to live on in popular imagination as our Crone in Residence.
And then there’s Assir, Elkanah, and Abiasaf - the Sons of Korach, who, surprisingly, are still alive, even after their father’s failed insurrection ends up with the earth swallowing up all rebels and a fire consuming the rest. The list reminds us of what happened and then adds, cryptically:
וּבְנֵי־קֹ֖רַח לֹא־מֵֽתוּ׃
“The sons of Korah did not die. “ Ba 26:11
Many have tried to make sense of this strange text. Aviva Zorneberg comments: “A full verse is given to the statement, leaving an impression of an unfinished thought. And Korach’s children are later recorded as the singers in the Temple: several of the Psalms are attributed to the sons of Korach. But were they not swallowed up in the general cataclysm of “all Korach’s people”? One resolution is offered in the Talmud: “A place was reserved for them in the underworld and they sat there and sang.”
The full Talmud quote (Tractate Sanhedrin 116.) is even weirder, attributed to the words of a famous traveler, mythologist and storyteller on the border of fiction and the absurd:
“Rabbah bar bar Chanah said: One time, I was walking along the road. An arab merchant said to me, "Come, and I will show you "the swallowed ones of Korach."" He went and showed two cracks in the ground and smoke was coming out of it.... He said to me, "Listen to what you're about to hear." I heard that they were singing, "Moses and his Torah are True, and we were wrong!"
Popular imagination continues where the book stops to tell a more complex ongoing story. Korach’s sons may not have agreed with their father’s approach to begin with, or perhaps they did but changed their mind? They are, eternally, undead, kinda like zombies, chanting psalms from just below the surface of consciousness, an enduring reminder of survival, redemption, the power of song?
Historians claim that this strange insertion has more to do with later traditions of priestly power grab games in the Jerusalem temple courts but I want to take the Talmud tall tale as an invitation to imagine that every wrong has another turn coming, no death is final, and if we listen closely, we can hear them sing inside our head and hearts, forever flicking on the switch between the known and the unknown, statistics, and numbers, and myths that challenge what we think we know about laws and about life.
Below the Bible Belt: 929 chapters, 42 months, daily reflections:
Join Rabbi Amichai’s 3+ years interactive online quest to question, queer + re-read between the lines of the entire Hebrew Bible, with daily reflections, weekly videos and monthly learning sessions.
#wilderness #bookofnumbers #zombies # #sonsofkorah #immortality #Bamidbar26 #bamidbar #thetorah #hebrewbible #whowrotethebible? #talmud #psalms #BneiKorach #rabbahbarbarchana
#hebrewmyth #929 #torah #bible #hiddenbible #sefaria #929english #labshul #929project #myth #belowthebiblebelt #postpatriarchy
After seven successive generations, the prophet Samuel arose from the line of Korah, the genealogy of which is recorded in 1 Chronicles 6:31–38 and 1 Samuel 1:1, 20. Apparently the son of Korah did not die.
B'neyQorach Zombies. Good torah.