This is one of the points to ponder from Parsha Potpourri by Oizer Alpert
Which people who have appeared earlier in the Torah were reincarnated as Korach and his assembly? (Rabbeinu Bechaye 16:29)
Rabbeinu Bechaye notes that the verse states (16:2) ויקמו לפני משה – Korach and his followers stood up before Moshe. It would have been more grammatically correct to say ויקמו על משה – they stood up against Moshe. The word לפני also means “before” and is used to hint that these individuals were gilgulim of earlier generations. Regarding the generation of the dispersion, the Torah records (Bereishis 11:4) that they said הבה נבנה לנו עיר ומגדל וראשו בשמים ונעשה לנו שם – Come, let us build for ourselves a city and a tower which reaches the Heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves. Regarding the inhabitants of Sodom, the Torah writes (Bereishis 19:4) ואנשי העיר אנשי סדום. This literally means, “The men of the city, the men of Sodom,” but it alludes to the fact that the inhabitants of Sodom were reincarnations of the generation of the dispersion who had expressed their interest in building for themselves a city. Parshas Korach begins by stating ויקח קרח, which is translated into Aramaic by Onkelos as ואתפלג, which alludes to the fact that Korach was reincarnated from the דור הפלגה, generation of the dispersion, and for this reason, Korach and his followers are referred to (16:2) as אנשי שם, which was the goal of that generation. This was also the reason that Dasan and Aviram told Moshe (16:14) that even if he blinded them, they would still not go with him to Israel. They specifically mentioned this punishment because as gilgulim of the townspeople of Sodom, they had already once been afflicted with blindness (Bereishis 19:11).
Have a good shabbos everyone!
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100 Days
3 months ago
2 comments:
...hm. I didn't know that pre-Arizal Spanish commentators like Rabeinu Bah'ye used kabalistic ideas like gilgul. Maybe I'll look it up to see for myself..
i discussed this with my parents later, and we basically agreed that it doesn't make sense because at least some of the people of sdom were alive already by the haflaga. (dor haflaga was in 1996, and avraham was born in 1948. the tzivuy of lech lecha was when avraham was 75 in 2023. Since lifespans were so much longer then, it's not shayach to see that all of dor haflaga was dead)
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