Tafsiran Bilangan 16:6: Rashi, Rabbeinu Bahya, Rav Hirsch & Chizkuni

זאת עשו קחו לכם מחתות THIS DO: TAKE YOU CENSERS — What reason had he to speak to them thus? He said to them: according to the custom of the heathens there are numerous forms of divine worship, and consequently numerous priests, for they cannot assemble for worship in one temple; we, however, have One God, one Ark, one Law, one Altar, all constituting one form of worship and therefore we need but one High Priest; — and you, 250 men, all demand the High Priesthood?! I would like this myself, but events will prove that this is impossible. Here you have a rite which is dear to God more than any other — it is the offering of incense, which is even dearer to Him than all the sacrifices, but a deadly poison is contained in it, for through it Nadab and Abihu were burnt!” (cf. Leviticus 10:2). It was on this account that he warned them by saying, And it shall come to pass that the man whom the Lord will choose is the holy one — he is already in his state of holiness (not “he will become holy”; he thus warned them that there was not the slightest likelihood that they would be chosen). This must be the meaning of הוא הקדוש, not "he will become holy”, for do we not know that he whom He would choose would become holy? But this, in effect, is what Moses said to them: “I am telling you this in order that you may not imperil your lives, for only he whom He will choose will come out of this alive, but all of you will perish” (Midrash Tanchuma, Korach 5).

זאת עשו, קחו לכם מחתות, ”you are to do the following: ‘take fire-pans for yourselves, etc.” Moses said: “seeing that you have accused me of substituting the Levites for the firstborn in order to give high rank to my brother Aaron and his sons, and that I have made the Levites subservient to Aaron, and that I have done all this arbitrarily without instruction from G’d, I will give you a chance to test your claim.” Take fire-pans and offer incense, a procedure which is forbidden to non-priests on pain of death- seeing the Torah wrote: ‘anyone not authorised to do this who approaches sacred precincts will die’ (Numbers 1,51). If you will succeed in your offering and will be saved from the punishment spelled out, I will admit that your claim that G’d does not make any distinction between one tribe and another is correct.”
This is also what is meant by the Midrash which claims that “Moses gave these people a deadly poison.” The Midrash meant that the advice Moses gave these rebels, i.e. to offer incense contained a deadly ingredient; if they would accept the challenge they would become guilty of death at the hands of G’d. Had the Midrash meant this literally, the fact that these rebels died would not have demonstrated that it was G’d’s judgment that killed them and the rebels would have had further cause for complaint against Moses.

You should know that Onkelos translates the word קטורת, incense, in this paragraph as קטרת instead of as קטרת בוסמין as he does elsewhere. [Rabbi Chavell quotes Nachmanides as emending the text in Onkelos as our text does not correspond to what our author writes, and in our text Onkelos writes קטרת בוסמין, Ed.] It appears, based on the changed use of the word קטרת by Onkelos, that he felt that what the 250 men offered on their pans was not the classic mixture of incense described in Exodus chapter 30, but a different mix of incense altogether, the one usually described by the Torah as לבונה, frankincense. Onkelos makes the same distinction when describing the “incense” offered by the sons of Aaron, Nadav and Avihu. Perhaps he did not want to add the word בוסמין whenever the offering of this mixture was unauthorized. At any rate, the opinion of our sages in the Tanchuma is that the mixture in question which the 250 rebels presented in their fire-pans was identical to that regularly offered inside the Tabernacle mornings and evenings. This is the view of Nachmanides.

מחתות CENSERS — vessels into which coals are raked and which have a handle (cf. Rashi on Exodus 27:3).