Weekly Torah Reading, Korah, June 28, 2025

For Argument’s Sake

 

This week’s Torah reading recounts the attempted revolt of Koraḥ and his allies. According to Numbers 16:3, the rebels “assembled” (vay-yiqqahalu) against Moses and Aaron. The same verb appears again in Numbers 16:19, where it is said that Koraḥ “assembled the whole band against them.” All this makes perfect sense: Koraḥ was a rabble-rouser bent on building a coalition to challenge the status quo.

 

But some years ago, an eminent Hebrew scholar suggested a different understanding: the root q-h-l in Hebrew (as well as Syriac, a related Semitic language) sometimes seems to mean “argue” or “reprove.” One of the proofs he cited came from a passage in the biblical book of Nehemiah, which reports on a conflict between Nehemiah and the Judean officials. Nehemiah says, “And I set upon them a great qehillah…and I said to them, ‘What you are doing is not right’” (Nehemiah 5:7-9). It seems unlikely that Nehemiah was saying that he rounded up a lot of people just in order to support his side of the argument. This was a legal dispute, not gang warfare. Rather, Nehemiah seems to be reporting that he lodged a complaint against his opponents, as the passage goes on to detail.

 

This understanding has some interesting implications. The biblical book of Ecclesiastes is so called because its speaker is called Qohelet in Hebrew. This was long understood to mean that he was a “man of the assembly” (which is why the book came to be called ekklesiastes, “assemblyman,” in the Old Greek translation). But what assembly was that? There is never any mention of such a gathering in the book of Qohelet itself. So perhaps the author of Ecclesiastes was so called because he had acquired the nickname of “the Arguer” or “the Reprover”—which certainly fits the book’s overall theme.

 

Now, this same root appears at the start of this week’s Torah reading, “And they (Koraḥ and Company) vayyiqqahalu against Moses and Aaron and said to them, ‘Now you have gone too far!’” (Numbers 16:3). It seems that the Torah isn’t stressing Koraḥ’s success in raising a crowd; he seems to have had a meager 250 followers. Rather than a dangerous rabble-rouser, he seems to have been just a complainer or malcontent.

 

Shabbat shalom!