Words can be dangerous – Korach
The text does not explain what it was he took. One view is that he took words and manipulated and twisted them to humiliate Moses and cause him embarrassment.
Superficially, Korach’s words sound reasonable. “All the congregation are holy.” he says: “so why do you lift yourself up above the assembly of the Lord?”
It seems a perfectly good argument for democracy against the alleged tyranny of Moses and Aaron. Korach sounds so plausible that it is no wonder that many are taken in and begin to feel he has a valid point.
This is what words can do. They can make or break human beings. They can change the course of history.
The twentieth century knows this only too well with demagogues and dictators who have brought civilisation to its knees. That this has happened in the most educated century in history is truly paradoxical. For one would have thought that the better educated people are, the better they see through the clever mischief-making of a false leader. But the unfortunate fact is that charisma, demagoguery and rhetoric can entrap people and lead them to follow down dangerous paths.
Hence the need to train people not only in knowledge but in wisdom, and to help them cultivate a critical faculty which will protect them against being taken in by masters of words who use fine phrases to hide naked ambition and unworthy motives. One of my teachers used to insist that we ask, about Rashi for example, not merely, “What does he say?” but “What does he mean to say?”
A useful approach to demagogues too: we should always ask the deeper question, “What does he mean to say?” And if it becomes clear that the speaker twists words and manipulates minds and has an ulterior motive, that’s when we must have the nerve to resist his influence and the critical faculty to reject both his honey and his sting.
