Numbers 15-16

God tells them to prepare an offering after they enter the promised land and every time of the first of your ground meal, and it will be an aroma pleasing to God. It sounds like everyone (including aliens) should bring an offering to God, and that it should be an animal (ram or bull) with grain or wine.

If you unintentionally fail to obey God's commandments, the the whole community has to offer a young bull as an burnt offering, and they also have to bring stuff for grain, drink and sin offerings. That is a lot of offerings, but this is the only way they will be forgiven. But if you knowingly sin and break one of the commandments, then you are cut off from the rest of the people. Then the passage segues into a story about a guy who was found working on the Sabbath and was gathering wood. The village stoned him to death (Harsh! So glad that we don't get stoned for doing chores).

Now God said to Moses that the Israelites have to make blue tassels and wear them on their garments to remind themselves of the commandments.

A Levite named Korah rebels against Moses with 250 Israelites, who were well known community leaders. They accused him of being holier than everyone else. Moses responded by saying that the Levites have gone too far and the Lord will show who is holy tomorrow. They seem to be jealous that they don't get to be priests and that they have not reached the promised land yet. Moses was really angry and told God not to accept their offering. He told the people that they all had to take their incense container and put fire and incense in it, even Aaron. They obeyed Moses. God told Moses and Aaron to move away from the group so he can kill them, but they pleaded with him not to kill all of them when only one guy is responsible. Instead God told him to move the others away, and then created an earthquake to kill the Korah and his family, where the earth literally swallowed them up and the earth closed over them. When Korah's supporters saw that the men were swallowed alive, they panicked too, and then God burned them alive. Aaron had to take the incense containers and scatter the remains. The containers are holy, so they were to flatten them out and put them on the altar and become a sign to the Israelites that no one but the priests should burn incense before God.

People blamed Moses and Aaron for killing those people. God was upset again and planned to kill them. Aaron rushed to make atonement for them but the plague had already started. 14,700 people died from the plague. Wow lots of people died from sin in this passage!