Was Korah a Hypocrite?

In chapters 16-17 of Numbers, there are a series of confrontations between Moses and several factions of the Israelites.

In one of these, Moses is speaking to Korah who is the leader of one faction (or maybe the leader of two or even three factions depending on your interpretation). Here is what Moses says (I've used Young's literal translation which emphasizes the plural vs singular and past vs present distinction),

¹And Korah, son of Izhar, son of Kohath, son of Levi, taketh both Dathan and Abiram sons of Eliab, and On son of Peleth, sons of Reuben,

²and they rise up before Moses, with men of the sons of Israel, two hundred and fifty, princes of the company, called of the convention, men of name,

³and they are assembled against Moses and against Aaron, and say unto them, `Enough of you! for all the company -- all of them [are] holy, and in their midst [is] J... ; and wherefore do ye lift yourselves up above the assembly of J...?'

⁴And Moses heareth, and falleth on his face,

⁵and he speaketh unto Korah, and unto all his company, saying, `Morning! -- and J... is knowing those who are his, and him who is holy, and hath brought near unto Him; even him whom He doth fix on He bringeth near unto Him.

⁶This do: take to yourselves censers, Korah, and all his company,

⁷and put in them fire, and put on them perfume, before J... to-morrow, and it hath been, the man whom J... chooseth, he [is] the holy one; -- enough of you, sons of Levi.'

⁸And Moses saith unto Korah, `Hear ye, I pray you, sons of Levi;

⁹is it little to you that the God of Israel hath separated you from the company of Israel to bring you near unto Himself, to do the service of the tabernacle of J..., and to stand before the company to serve them? --

¹⁰yea, He doth bring thee near, and all thy brethren the sons of Levi with thee -- and ye have sought also the priesthood!

One way of thinking about this is that in verse 9, Moses is referring to the fact that the Levites had been given the honor of carrying the disassembled tabernacles when the Israelites would journey (and Korah's clan was assigned to carry the holiest of the items, e.g., the ark). If Korah was interested in 'spiritual equality' (as one might think from verse 3), shouldn't he have said then (when the Levites were appointed for the task), that the other tribes should get their chance at this. Or, at the time when the Levites were given the honor of attending to the details of the offerings, shouldn't Korah have spoken up at that time. In verse 10, Moses is saying that therefore, Korah's pretense of seeking spiritual equality is simply a gambit to get the priesthood for himself.

Of course there are many other ways to look at this. Given this, I won't do an analysis.

the image is from a blog (the blogger is a 59 year old nurse;she posts a lot of Christian content and the post that used this image was about her feeling 'stiff necked' that morning)

The portion of Bamidbar (a.k.a., Numbers), in Hebrew and the JPS translation (different from the one above) is here.

I altered Young's translation slightly to use the phrase, "J..." when Young uses a pronunciation.

Hypocrisy and Culpability

Well anyway, that's the title of an opinion piece in The New Republic (a.k.a., TNR, a magazine that is leftist on economic matters and internationalist on foreign matters).

As is usual the opinion piece doesn't specify the hypocrisy (or the culpability), but the gist is that since President Obama aided the rebels in Libya who were in danger of massacre, Obama should do the same for the people of the Nuba mountains who are in more danger. TNR is on strong factual grounds with respect to the relative genocidal nature of Libya's Qaddafi vs Sudan's Omar Al Bashir. The latter has already been involved in genocide in Dafar and south Sudan while the former is merely a run of the mill thug whose has opponents murdered in small groups.

Notwithstanding this, I don't think Obama is guilty of hypocrisy here. In his March 2011 statement on Libya, Obama indicated that the situation was 'special',

"....It's true that America cannot use our military wherever repression occurs. And given the costs and risks of intervention, we must always measure our interests against the need for action. But that cannot be an argument for never acting on behalf of what's right. In this particular country — Libya — at this particular moment, we were faced with the prospect of violence on a horrific scale. We had a unique ability to stop that violence: an international mandate for action, a broad coalition prepared to join us, the support of Arab countries, and a plea for help from the Libyan people themselves. We also had the ability to stop Gadhafi's forces in their tracks without putting American troops on the ground...."

As the quote implies, Obama sought to make a distinction between the Libyan situation and other situations that would come up. In addition, in the Libyan case, the anti Gadhafi forces had control of a huge contiguous territory and that made the logistics of aiding them much easier (of course, Obama seems to have vastly underestimated the problem in Libya but that is just a mistake, not hypocrisy). Some people have pointed out a cynical difference between the Libyan situation and others. In Libya, a putative massacre would result in lots of gory images and victims who speak English saying 'why didn't you help us?' whereas that is less likely in the Nuba mountains where telecommunications are almost non existent.


The TNR opinion piece is here. A report on the potential for genocide of people in the area of the Nuba mountains is here. Obama's "Responsibility to Act" speech on Libya is here.

The Hypocrisy Defense: Is it Political Suicide

Zombie is a blogger who frequently writes for Pajamas Media. Zombie is conservative and lives in San Francisco. He is mildly famous for documenting the many anti Bush rallies in SF where Bush was compared to Hitler.

Zombie has a post in which he states that the hypocrisy defense (e.g., "at least Weiner is not a hypocrite because he never preached morality) is political suicide for liberals.

The argument zombie makes is one in which he asserts that to use the hypocrisy defense, you have to base it on the premise that you have no fundamental moral values and this is a bad thing politically.

I would argue that a number of liberals have survived 'moral' scandal (e.g., Rep Barney Frank and his relationship with a male stripper, former President Bill Clinton and Monica) and a number of conservatives have also survived scandal (e.g., Senator Vitter and his relationship with a call girl). The empirical evidence doesn't seem decisive one way or another.



Zombie's post is here.

A Slate writer defends Hypocrisy in the case of Representative Anthony Weiner.

Slate is a webzine, once owned by Microsoft, now owned by the Washington Post. Almost all the writers are left of center, some more so.

A Slate writer, one Jessica Dweck, has an article called, "The Case for Tolerating Left-Wing Lotharios" Slate calls it, "In Defense of Sex Double Standards "

My favorite part of Jessica's post is,

"...

Why didn’t this salacious, potentially career-destroying story [referring to the tweet of underwear from Representative Weiner's Twitter account] generate the same insta-circus as “Craigslist Congressman” Chris Lee’s beefcake photos or any one of the many GOP sex scandals over the last several years? It’s due in part to the journalistic torpor of the long holiday weekend, but—let’s be honest—it’s also because he’s an outspoken liberal. And that’s not a bad thing.

Conservatives might cry foul over the double standard in reporting on sex scandals for Democrats and Republicans, but it’s justified..."

Jessica conflates conservatives and Republicans but, nonetheless, her point is semi coherent. She believes that any opposition to any form of abortion is objectively wrong or at least subjectively wrong from the point of women (I'm not sure which it is).

If one believes the former, then being hypocritical is simply a tactic. Of course its not clear if this justifies all hypocrisy or only hypocrisy by women but whichever, this is a refreshing statement by a self identified liberal Democrat.


The Slate piece is here.