In
a different rebellion, Dathan and
Abiram, sons of Eliab (and Reubenites—perhaps angry because of their
position in the camp) tell Moses, “Are
you not satisfied with having led us here away from a land flowing with mild
and honey, to make us perish in the desert, that must now lord it over us”
(16:13). Moses is furious. His conscience is clear regarding their
accusations.
Dathan
and Abiram are sucked down to the nether world with everything they owned--the
earth closed over them and they perished from the community (16:33-34).
As
for Korah and the 250, fire comes down from the Lord and consumes them all—the
story ends at 17:27 where the people express fear that every time someone
approaches the Meeting Tent, he is consumed.
The story
of Korah’s rebellion is hardly ever referred to today in sermons or in Christian
writings, but it has always been interesting to me that it played such an
important part of George Fox’s vision of the Old Testament narrative. He spends
a lot of time discussing it. AND what is most interesting to me is that in his
writings it intersects with an idea, which he develops that I first see in
early Christian writings in Irenaeus (below) – the idea that the narrative of
the Old Testament is “recapitulating” itself in the story of Christ and His
redemption of all creation.
Irenaeus
doesn’t do with it quite what Fox does – make it into a part of the
recapitulation that happens in every believer, but he is the first I am away of
who instead of just seeing predictions of what will happen in Christ, sees a
recapitulation of the entire narrative line. And just to top it off – I had no
plan to include these selections together on my site – it just happened!!
Irenaeus of Lyons
(c.180 AD)
Selections from the Work Against Heresies
Book V – Redemption
and the World to Come
The New Creation in
Christ “Recapitulates” the Old
19 – “So the Lord now
manifestly came to his own, and, born by his own created order which he himself
bears, he by his obedience on the tree renewed [and reversed] what was done by
disobedience in [connection with] a tree; and [the power of] that seduction by which
the virgin Eve, already betrothed to a man, had been wickedly seduced was
broken when the angel in truth brought good tidings to the Virgin Mary, who
already [by her betrothal] belonged to a man. For as Eve was seduced by the
word of an angel to flee from God, having rebelled against his Word, so Mary by
the word of an angel received the glad tidings that she would bear God by
obeying his Word. The former was seduced to disobey God [and so fell], but the
latter was persuaded to obey God, so that the Virgin Mary might become the
advocate of the virgin Eve.”
20 – “Therefore he
renews these things in himself, uniting man to the Spirit; and placing the
Spirit in man, he himself is made the head of the Spirit, and gives the Spirit
to be the head of man, for by him we see and hear and speak.”
21 – “He therefore completely renewed all things, both
taking up the battle against our enemy, and crushing him who at the beginning
had led us captive in Adam, trampling on his head, as you find in Genesis that
God said to the serpent, ‘And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and
between your seed and her seed; he will be on the watch for our head, and you
will be on the watch for his heel.’ From then on it was proclaimed that he who
was to be born of a virgin, after the likeness of Adam, would be on the watch
for the serpent’s head—this is the seed of which the apostle says in the Letter
to the Galatians, ‘The law of works was established until the seed should come
to whom the promise was made.’”
If you want
to see what I came to see in this, you could check out the article entitled John and Genesis.
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