The Contradiction of Core: The Priesthood Seized and the Earth Opened
Old Testament: Numbers 16:3, 5, 10, 31-33
And when they had stood up against Moses and Aaron, they said: Let it be enough for you, that all the multitude consisteth of holy ones, and the Lord is among them: Why lift you up yourselves above the people of the Lord? ... In the morning the Lord will make known who belong to him, and the holy he will join to himself ... that you should challenge to yourselves the priesthood also ... the earth broke asunder under their feet: And opening her mouth, devoured them with their tents and all their substance. And they went down alive into hell the ground closing upon them, and they perished from among the people.
Old Testament, also: Numbers 16:46-48
Moses said to Aaron: Take the censer, and putting fire in it from the altar, put incense upon it, and go quickly to the people to pray for them: for already wrath is gone out from the Lord, and the plague rageth. When Aaron had done this, and had run to the midst of the multitude which the burning fire was now destroying, he offered the incense: And standing between the dead and the living, he prayed for the people, and the plague ceased.
New Testament: Jude 1:11, 13; 2 Timothy 2:19
Woe unto them, for they have gone in the way of Cain: and after the error of Balaam they have for reward poured out themselves, and have perished in the contradiction of Core. ... Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own confusion; wandering stars, to whom the storm of darkness is reserved for ever. ... But the sure foundation of God standeth firm, having this seal: the Lord knoweth who are his; and let every one depart from iniquity who nameth the name of the Lord.
The connection
Core was a Levite, already brought near to serve the tabernacle, and it was not enough for him. Core rose against Moses and Aaron with a word that sounds like humility: "all the multitude consisteth of holy ones... Why lift you up yourselves above the people of the Lord?" (Numbers 16:3). Moses names what he wanted: "that you should challenge to yourselves the priesthood also" (Numbers 16:10). God answers in the morning. "The earth broke asunder under their feet... And they went down alive into hell... and they perished from among the people" (Numbers 16:31-33). Jude names Core as the pattern of the false teachers who have crept into the Church: "Woe unto them, for they have gone in the way of Cain: and after the error of Balaam... and have perished in the contradiction of Core" (Jude 11). The last word is the one Numbers used; in the Latin both end perierunt, and in the Greek both apolonto. Paul reaches for the same chapter against Hymeneus and Philetus: "the Lord knoweth who are his" (2 Timothy 2:19), the Septuagint of Moses' answer to Core, word for word but for Lord in place of God, and "let every one depart" as Moses told the people, "Depart from the tents of these wicked men" (Numbers 16:26). The Fathers read Core as the first schism. Augustine calls it "that first beginning of schism, when in that first people of the Jews certain proud men separated themselves, and would without have sacrificed" (Expositions on the Psalms, Psalm 55, 15). Irenaeus warns that those who "rise up in opposition to the truth, and exhort others against the Church of God" shall be "swallowed up by an earthquake, even as those who were with Chore, Dathan, and Abiron" (Against Heresies IV.26.2).
Moral sense
Core's sin wore the clothes of equality, and that is why it still persuades. The remedy is written beside the priesthood itself: "Neither doth any man take the honour to himself, but he that is called by God, as Aaron was" (Hebrews 5:4). Ambrose reads Aaron's choice the same way: "No one ought to take this honour upon himself but they are called of God, as was Aaron" (Letter 63, 48), and the Catechism keeps it: "no one claims this office for himself; he is called to it by God" (CCC 1578). Jude shows what a self-sent teacher becomes: "Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own confusion; wandering stars" (Jude 13), all motion and no rest, light that leads nowhere. Envy of another's calling is the first crack in the ground.
Anagogical sense
When the fire broke out on the rebels' followers, Aaron, the priest Core despised, ran into the midst of the people with the censer, "and standing between the dead and the living, he prayed for the people, and the plague ceased" (Numbers 16:48). The true Priest does not seize His office; He spends it for those who rejected Him. So Christ "did not glorify himself, that he might be made a high priest" (Hebrews 5:5), and "always living to make intercession for us" (Hebrews 7:25). At the end the division Core began is sorted by the One who knows His own: the stars that led many to justice "shall shine... as stars for all eternity" (Daniel 12:3), and the wandering stars go to the darkness reserved for them.
The Fathers
St Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, Psalm 55, 15: "that first beginning of schism, when in that first people of the Jews certain proud men separated themselves, and would without have sacrificed." St Irenaeus, Against Heresies IV.26.2: "But such as rise up in opposition to the truth, and exhort others against the Church of God... being swallowed up by an earthquake, even as those who were with Chore, Dathan, and Abiron." St Cyprian, Epistle 75: "even Korah, Dathan, and Abiram knew the same God as did the priest Aaron and Moses." St Ambrose, Letter 63, 48: "No one ought to take this honour upon himself but they are called of God, as was Aaron."
Warrant
Scriptural because Jude names Core as the figure of the false teachers and ends their story with his verb: Numbers 16:33 et perierunt, Jude 11 in contradictione Core perierunt; in the Greek, the Septuagint's apolonto and Jude's apolonto. 2 Timothy 2:19 quotes the Septuagint of Numbers 16:5, egno ... tous ontas autou, with kyrios for theos. The reading of Core as schism is drawn by Irenaeus, Cyprian and Augustine, Cyprian noting that the rebels knew the same God as Aaron. Jude 13's wandering stars most likely draw on the Book of Enoch, which Jude quotes in the next verse; the entry uses the image, not Enoch.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1578.
The verses
Numbers 16:3 · Numbers 16:5 · Numbers 16:10 · Numbers 16:31 · Numbers 16:32 · Numbers 16:33 · Numbers 16:46 · Numbers 16:47 · Numbers 16:48 · Jude 1:11 · Jude 1:13 · 2 Timothy 2:19
