Rabbah Bar Bar Hana (110a)

There are a series of stories in Bava Batra that peaked my interest. They are mostly told by Rabbah bar bar Hana and they make almost no sense. For this reason, they have become allegories for some of the most important ideas in Judaism (most notably issues surrounding the evil inclination). Yesterday's daf had a parallel from one of these stories (the 14th, from B.B 74a). Here it is in soncino translation, my comments in italics:

Rabbah b. Bar Hana said: I was proceeding on my travels, when an Arab said to me, ‘Come, and I will show you where the men of Korah were swallowed up.’ I went and saw two cracks whence issued smoke. Thereupon he took a piece of clipped wool, soaked it in water, attached it to the point of his spear, and passed it over there, and it was singed. He said to me, ‘Listen to what you are about to hear.’ And I heard them saying thus [voices from under the ground]: ‘Moses and his Torah are true, but they [Korah's company] are liars.’ [these are actually Korah's group speaking in 3rd person about themselves]. The Arabian then said to me, ‘Every thirty days Gehenna causes them to turn back [here] like meat in a pot, and they say thus: "Moses and his Torah are true, but they [we] are liars."

There are a lot of interpretations of this text, the most basic is that Korah's men bemoan their rebellion and openly admit the truth of Moses's leadership and his Torah.  I want to bring another very interesting interpretation by a commentator "benyamin amar" (lit. Benjamin Zev Wolf HaLevi, born around 1740).

According to him, this story reminds us that Korach's men erred in two respects (how he arrived at this concept requires a closer reading). On the one hand, Korach's men thought that everyone is worthy to obtain prophesy and connection to God. However, this is not true, there are some people that are more worthy and Moses is one of them (I think he gets this from the first part of the statement, "Moses...[is] true.") The second mistake is that they thought that divine Providence is equal among everyone. Knowing what I know about Rambam's notion of Providence in the Guide for the Perplexed (who he quotes) Providence and Torah are intimately tied. Here is a quote from the Jewish Encyclopedia.

Maimonides then proceeds to expound the theory of the Jewish religion. Man is free and God is just. Good is given man as a reward, evil as a punishment. All is adjusted according to merit. Providence, practically, is concerned only about man. The relation of providence is not the same to all men. Divine influence reaches man through the intellect. The greater man's share in this divine influence, the greater the effect of divine providence on him. With the Prophets it varies according to their prophetic faculty; in the case of pious and good men, according to their piety and uprightness. The impious are become like beasts, and are thus outside the scope of providence. God is for the pious a most special providence.

Therefore the more one studies and the closer one is to Torah the better and easier it is to connect to God and the more influence Providence will have over him.

I don't bring this commentary for any reason other than to show that there is a rich body of work (much of it which needs more translation and more scholarly study), namely later commentaries on the aggadic portions of the Talmud. These commentaries are fascinating and deserve a great deal of attention.