Holly Bible - KJV with Concise Commentaries by Z Selam - HTML preview
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33 They, and all that appertained to them, went down alive into the pit,
and the earth closed upon them: and they perished from among the congregation.
Execution is immediately done. It appeared that God and his servant Moses understood one another very well; for, as soon as ever Moses had spoken the word, God did the work, the earth clave asunder (Nu 16:31), opened her mouth, and swallowed them all up, them and theirs (Nu 16:32), and then closed upon them, Nu 16:33. This judgment was,
1. Unparalleled. God, in it, created a new thing, did what he never did before; for he has many arrows in his quiver; and there are diversities of operations in wrath as well as mercy. Dathan and Abiram thought themselves safe because they were at a distance from the shechinah, whence the fire of the Lord had sometimes issued, qui procul à Jove (they say) procul à fulmine--he who is far from Jove is far from the thunderbolt. But God made them to know that he was not tied up to one way of punishing; the earth, when he pleases, shall serve his justice as effectually as the fire.
2. It was very terrible to the sinners themselves to go down alive into their own graves, to be dead and buried in an instant, to go down thus to the bars of the pit when they were in their full strength wholly at ease and quiet.
3. It was severe upon their poor children, who, for the greater terror of the judgment, and fuller indication of the divine wrath, perished as parts of their parents, in which, though we cannot particularly tell how bad they might be to deserve it or how good God might be otherwise to them to compensate it, yet of this we are sure in the general, that Infinite Justice did them no wrong. Far be it from God that he should do iniquity.
4. It was altogether miraculous. The cleaving of the earth was as wonderful, and as much above the power of nature, as the cleaving of the sea, and the closing of the earth again more so than the closing of the waters. God has all the creatures at his