Parshat Korach, 5772/2012 second thoughts
Might as well start with this fine old post by DovBear. He's changed "comment providers" so often that, apparently, he's lost all his old comments :(, but he did an excellent job of illustrating what a mess the story of Korach's rebellion is.
Long story short: If Korach was at the entrance to the Ohel Moed/Tent of Meeting with his censer, as ordered, how could he have been swallowed up when the earth opened up near his tent?
My conclusion: With due respect to my more traditional readers, I'm calling "scribal error" on this one. Korach died with the other censer-carrying rebels at the entrance to the Ohel Moed; Datan and Aviram were swallowed up by the earth.
Haftarah:
The obvious parallel is that the people want to replace Shmuel/Samuel with a king, and, like Moshe/Moses, Shmuel protests that he's never taken anything wrongfully from anyone else. A less obvious parallel is the extreme manner in which Shmuel has the people punished--Moshe asks HaShem to open up the ground and swallow the rebels; Shmuel asks HaShem to send a thunderstorm that threatens to destroy the wheat-harvest (see 1 Samuel, chapter 12, verse 17-18). Those were rather nasty responses from two servants of HaShem, if you ask me.
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