Numbers 26:9-11

There is something very interesting in Numbers 26:9.

Is that not interesting? Dathan died. Abiram died, their wives and children, and grandchildren died. Their tents were all swallowed up. Korah died with them, but somehow or another Korah's children were separated away, and they did not die. Now why? As we are going to see in just a little bit, God could have sought them out, but He did not. He let them live. Not only did He let them live, we find their names later on in the Bible, that the sons of Korah were honored to be among the singers of Israel, performing before God. Not only that, the sons of Korah are responsible for eleven psalms that appear in the Bible.

I can only think of three reasons why this occurred. One is that they did not join with their father in the rebellion. They did not agree with him, and so when those people gathered together, they went with the whole group rather than with the 250, and their own father. They abandoned their father. But like I said, even if they had abandoned their father, God could have still sought them out with what happened in just a minute.

There is another reason. Maybe He did not kill them because they were Levites, and the Levites indeed did have part and parcel of the work in the Tabernacle, whereas Dathan and Abiram were Reubenites, and not Levites.

A third possibility is that God let them continue to live as a witness of His mercy, so that He made a clear distinction here, and as a witness to the whole rest of the Levites, showing that when God forgives He really forgives. He allowed them to carry the shame, if I can put it that way, of what their family—their forefather—did, and they had to bear that for the rest of their existence before all Israel.

So there are three reasons. I am sure it was done really to glorify God.