Legends of Old Testament characters, from the Talmud and other sourcesBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Religion
Legends of Old Testament characters, from the Talmud and other sources
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Bible. Old Testament -- Legends; Jewish legends
The Arabic name for Korah is Karoun, and under this name he has returned
to Rabbinic legends, and the identity of Korah and Karoun has not been
observed.
The Rabbis relate of Karoun that he is an evil angel, and that Moses dug
a deep pit for him in the land of Gad, and cast him into it. But
whenever the Israelites sinned, Karoun crept out of his subterranean
dwelling and plagued them.[560]
This is a curious instance of allegorizing upon a false interpretation
of a name. The Karoun of the Mussulmans is clearly identical with Korah,
but Karoun in Hebrew means Anger, and Karoun was supposed to be the
Angel of the Anger of the Lord, and the story of his emerging from his
pit to punish the sinful Israelites is simply a figurative mode of
saying that the anger of the Lord came upon them.
12. THE WARS OF THE ISRAELITES.
The children of Israel had many foes to contend with. Amongst these were
the Amorites. They hid in caves to form an ambuscade against the people
of God, intending, when the Israelites had penetrated into a defile
between two mountains, to sally forth upon them and to overthrow them.
But they did not know that the ark went before Israel, smoothing the
rough places and levelling the mountains.[561] Now, when the ark drew
near the place where the ambush was, the mountains fell in upon the
Amorites, and the Israelites passed on, and knew not that they had been
delivered from a great danger. But there were two lepers named Eth and
Hav, who followed the camp, and they saw the blood bubbling out from
under the mountain; and thus the fate of the Amorites was made
known.[562]
The Israelites found a redoubtable enemy in Og, king of Bashan, who was
one of the giants who had been saved from the old world by clambering on
the roof of the ark; but his weight had so depressed the vessel, that
Noah was obliged to turn out the hippopotamus and rhinoceros to preserve
the ark from foundering.
Og determined to destroy Moses. Moses was ten cubits in height, and when
Og came against him, he took a hatchet of ten cubits’ length, and he
made a jump into the air, and hit Og on the ankle. Og tore up a
mountain, and put it on his head to throw it upon Moses; but the ants
ate out the inside of the mountain, and it sank over Og’s head to his
neck, and he could not draw his head out, for his teeth grew into tusks
and thrust through the mountain, and he was blinded and caught as in a
trap. Thus Moses was able to slay him.[563]
Some further details on Og, furnished by the Rabbis, will assist the
reader in estimating the powers of Moses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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