Comentario sobre Números 16:26

[DEPART, I PRAY YOU, FROM THE TENTS OF THESE WICKED MEN], AND TOUCH NOTHING OF THEIRS, LEST YE BE SWEPT AWAY IN ALL THEIR SINS. The correct order [in meaning] of this verse is as follows: “Depart, I pray you, from the tents of these wicked men, lest ye be swept away in all their sins and touch nothing of theirs.” The meaning [therefore] is that if they do not depart from there, they will be swallowed up by the mouth of the earth, and he furthermore warned them that they should not touch [their property] and try to save any of their wealth by taking it for themselves, for it is a doomed thing.¹⁴⁰See Deuteronomy 7:26. And Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra wrote that [the verse is to be interpreted as it reads, and it is saying] that if they attempt to save their wealth, they will go down into the pit like them [Korach and his company]. And if so, the meaning of this will be like that of the verse, And his [Lot’s] wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt,¹⁴¹Genesis 19:26. In other words, according to Ibn Ezra’s interpretation we do not have to say that they will be swallowed up as a punishment for taking their wealth, but that they will automatically be affected as if it were a contagious disease. This is what happened to Lot’s wife when she turned back to see Sodom, for “the plague entered her mind when she saw the brimstone and salt, and it cleaved to her” (Ramban on Genesis, Vol. I, p. 259). as I have mentioned there in explaining the meaning of it.¹⁴²Ibid., Verse 17 (Vol. I, pp. 258-260).

פן תספו, for you will not deserve being saved if you will remain in their physical proximity at the time they will be punished.

וידבר אל העדה לאמור, He spoke to the congregation, saying, etc. The word לאמור means here that Moses told the people that he had been instructed by G'd to tell them what he was about to say.

ואל תגעו בכל אשר להם פן תספו בכל חטאתם, “and do not even touch any of their belongings lest you will also perish on account of their sin.” The plain meaning of the verse is that the Israelites are to distance themselves sufficiently far from the guilty people to escape the gaping hole in the earth that would swallow Korach and company, and to on no account try and grab some of their belongings as loot which the sinners had forfeited. All their belongings were totally taboo, חרם as of that moment. Ibn Ezra writes that the words פן תספו refer back to not touching any of these men in order to save them, as instead of saving them they too would become victims.

ואל תגעו בכל אשר להם “and do not touch any of their belongings!” G’d meant that if anyone sought to save the money that the rebels would forfeit for themselves they would share the fate of Korach, Datan and Aviram.
When the Torah describes Datan and Aviram as keeping an arrogant upright posture in front of their respective tents when Moses and the elders approached them, the sages of the Midrash understand this as a euphemism for insults hurled at Moses by these two individuals (Tanchuma Korach 3). They base this on the similarity of expressions used by Samuel I 17,4 describing Goliath’s haughty and insulting posture and the language used here. We know that Goliath was insulting vis-a-vis G’d and that David only agreed to fight him in order to teach him not to defy the G’d of Israel (Samuel I 17,45). Moses said that the proof that the death of these people would be because of their defiance of G’d and their curses would be the extraordinary way in which they would die.

בכל חטאתם, “in all their sins.” A better translation would be: “on account of their many sins.”

סורו נא מעל אהלי האנשים הרשעים האלה, "please depart from the tents of these wicked men." Moses was very astute in requesting from the people that by their departure from the tents of Korach they should indicate that they considered these men as wicked and about to perish. They should be afraid lest the evil that would overtake these men would also overtake them. If that would be the motivation behind their removing their presence from the tents of Korach G'd would interpret this positively and save them also from coming to harm. Even though G'd had already indicated that it was sufficient to merely remove oneself from Korach's tent, the righteous, such as Moses, are always concerned with helping their contemporaries to acquire additional merits.