The Sons of Korah, After Korah

Numbers itself states plainly, in a later chapter outside this portion, that 'the sons of Korah did not die' in the rebellion that swallowed their father (Numbers 26:11), a detail with a long canonical afterlife: the book of Chronicles lists descendants of Korah among the Levitical singers and gatekeepers of the Temple (1 Chronicles 6, 9, 26), and eleven psalms in the book of Psalms carry the heading 'of the sons of Korah' (including Psalms 42, 44-49, 84-85 and 87-88), meaning a family whose founder led the Torah's most notorious rebellion against Moses and Aaron became, in the Bible's own later record, among the most prominent hereditary musicians of Israel's sanctuary worship.

Source critics attribute the narrative of Korah's rebellion to a combination of Priestly material, evident in its concern with priestly legitimacy and the staffs left before the Ark, layered together with an older tradition, sometimes distinguished as involving the separate figures Dathan and Abiram, whose grievance in the received text concerns civil leadership rather than priesthood specifically, a seam many scholars read as evidence that two originally distinct rebellion traditions were combined into the single narrative now read as one continuous revolt.