Commentaria in Numeros
“Wilt thou also pull out our eyes?” In Hebrew, wilt thou put out the eyes of these men, who are with us? so that they may not see thy frauds and impostures; as if they said: Is it for this that thou callest us to thee, to dazzle or blind our eyes, that we may not see thy devices, by which, through favour to Aaron, thy brother, thou hast unjustly assigned the priesthood to him, we being excluded from it by him? as hitherto thou hast dazzled our eyes by thy sweet words and promises, and made us mad, that we should follow thee out of the rich region of Egypt into this barren and arid desert. Some interpret thus: that the putting out of the eyes was the penalty of disobedience and rebellion, as if to say: Even if thou wishest to put out our eyes for this disobedience and rebellion, that we do not come to thee, yet we will not come to thee.
Verse 15. “And Moses being exceeding angry, said to the Lord: Respect not their sacrifices.” “Sacrifices” he calls the incense-offerings: for these rebels did not offer victims, but only incense, as is plain from what follows.
“Thou knowest that I never took so much as a young ass from them,” as if to say: See, therefore, O Lord, how unjustly they accuse me of ambition, tyranny and domination.
Verse 17. “Take every one of you your censers, and put incense on them, offering to the Lord two hundred and fifty censers.” The seditious chiefs, the companions of Core, were 250, as is plain from verse 2; so many censers are here numbered, because each of them contended with Aaron for the priesthood and arrogated it to himself. Hence God willed that his sentence in this quarrel should be tested and declared rather by incense-offering than by the slaying of victims, because the immolation of 250 victims would have been costly, long and laborious: but incense and censers were at hand. Add that God is worshipped with incense by the rite of all nations, and that incense-offering is a most easy and at the same time most worthy sacrifice to God.
Note: These 250 censers were not taken from the tabernacle and the altar of holocausts: for those censers belonged to God, Moses and Aaron; not to these rebels, who were contending against God and Moses; but each one made his own censer of brass, as is plain from verse 39, by easy work, either before, when they began to aspire to the priesthood and to conspire among themselves, or certainly presently, when Moses gave them this permission, and ordered each to bring his own censer with incense. So Abulensis.
Verse 18. “When they had done this,” the 250 seditious chiefs, but not Core, Dathan, Abiron and Hon. For these four refused to come to Moses and to the tabernacle, but stayed at home in their tents out of pride and contumacy: perhaps also because they feared the vengeance of God, which they had seen in Nadab and Abiu, and which afterwards fell upon their 250 associates who offered incense, verse 35.
“Them (Moses and Aaron) ... all the multitude.” For these 250 seditious men called together the multitude of the people against Moses, that all might see this trial of their priesthood, and applaud it: for they did not doubt that they would easily and excellently offer incense. And for this cause the Lord willed to destroy the whole multitude, as consenting and applauding, but at the prayer of Moses he spared it, and only the 250 seditious chiefs perished.
See here how foolish those are who, not content with their own vocation, invade another’s, and how wisely it was said, and inscribed by the wise on the lintels of houses:
For if Core with his followers had been content with his own rank and office, he would not have incurred the death of body and soul. Prudently did Theopompus write to the Pylians, who offered him greater honours: “Moderate honours are increased by time, excessive ones are abolished.” So Plutarch in the Laconic Sayings.
“The glory of the Lord appeared to all,” namely a wonderful light and most radiant splendour in the pillar of cloud, representing God, and the glory and majesty of God.
Verses 20 and 21. “And he said: Separate yourselves from the midst of this congregation, that I may destroy them in a moment.” God here commands Moses and Aaron to be separated from the whole people, that he may destroy it; whence it is plain that the people applauded the rebellion of Core. Hence Moses prays for it, saying:
Verse 22. “Most mighty God of the spirits of all flesh, shall thy wrath rage against all for the sin of one?” as if to say: Thou, Lord, art God, creator, preserver and governor of all the spirits that are in all bodies, and thou containest them, and penetratest them to the marrow, so that thou knowest their inmost parts (for with a like phrase and sense Moses says, chap. xxvii, verse 16: “May the Lord, the God of the spirits of all flesh, provide a man that may be over this multitude”). Since, therefore, thou seest that the people has not sinned by rebellion, but only Core with his followers; and that the people, seduced by him, sinned only indirectly, namely because, eager for novelty, it ran together out of curiosity to this new spectacle of incense-offering and contention, and smiled upon it: therefore I beseech thee not to destroy, on account of one rebel, Core, the whole people, which is not rebellious.
Verse 24. “Command the whole people to separate themselves from the tents of Core, and Dathan, and Abiron,” I understand Hon also, because these four were the heads of the sedition, as is plain, and had refused to come to Moses and to the tabernacle to burn incense there with their 250 associates; these four stayed, therefore, each in his own tent. Whence Moses went to them, and caused them with their tents to be swallowed up by the earth. This will be plainer at verse 31.
Moses here teaches Prelates to maintain their dignity before others, even parents and kinsmen. Plutarch relates of Fabricius the Roman, who conquered Pyrrhus, that when, as an old man, he was hastening on horseback to his son, now consul, the son ordered him to dismount from his horse and to venerate him as consul; whom the father embraced, saying: “Rightly, son, thou judgest, perceiving over whom thou presidest, and what majesty of command thou hast attained.” St. Paul admonishes Timothy, Bishop of Ephesus, not to suffer himself to be despised: for he says, 1 Timothy iv, 12: “Let no man despise thy youth”; and Titus, Bishop of Crete, chap. ii, verse 15: “Let no man despise thee.” So St. Paul defends his dignity against detractors in the whole of the second epistle to the Corinthians.
So St. Charles Borromeo, a most humble man, bore and dissembled the curses heaped upon his own person; but when his dignity and ecclesiastical jurisdiction were touched, he defended it fearlessly against kings and princes, and excommunicated them, and for this cause asserted that he would gladly undergo death and martyrdom with St. Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury.
So St. Ambrose constantly defended the episcopal power against the Emperor Valentinian and his mother Justina, and for it more than once offered himself to death, and to a eunuch who threatened him with death unless he obeyed the Emperor in surrendering the church to the Arians, he answered: “Thou wilt do as eunuchs do; I shall suffer what Bishops suffer.” So St. Chrysostom defended his dignity against Eudoxia, St. Basil against Valens, St. Athanasius against Constantine, Constantius and Julian the Apostate, Gregory I against the Emperor Maurice, Gregory VII against Henry IV.
When the Empress Theodora pressed that Pope Vigilius should restore Anthimus the Patriarch, Menna the Catholic having been driven out, as he had promised before his pontificate, he answered that he would rather suffer any punishment, and die a thousand times, than recall a heretical man condemned by his predecessors, and change the sentence. And when the woman with her attendants pressed him with threats, he said that she had come to Diocletian, not to Justinian, as she supposed. Wherefore he was so beaten that he was within a little of being killed then. Fleeing therefore into the church of St. Euphemia, which was not far off, he was dragged from it by ruffians, and with a rope cast about his neck was hauled like a robber through the whole city until evening. Then, shut up in prison, he lived for some time on bread and water so patiently that he always said he had deserved even greater things, if a punishment worthy of his sins were inflicted. Alfonso Ciaconius in the Life of Vigilius.