Next, Aaron and his sons will use another blue cloth to cover the table for the sacred bread. On the cloth they will place the dishes, the bowls for incense, the cups, the jugs for wine, as well as the bread itself.

The gold incense altar is to be covered with a blue cloth, and then with a piece of fine leather, before its carrying poles are put in place.

Eleazar son of Aaron the priest will be in charge of the oil for the lamps, the sweet-smelling incense, the grain for the sacrifices, and the olive oil used for dedications and ordinations. Eleazar is responsible for seeing that the sacred tent, its furnishings, and the sacred objects are taken care of.

He must take his wife to the priest, together with one kilogram of ground barley as an offering to find out if she is guilty. No olive oil or incense is to be put on that offering.

So each leader brought the following gifts: a silver bowl that weighed one and a half kilograms and a silver sprinkling bowl weighing almost a kilogram, both of them filled with flour and olive oil as grain sacrifices and weighed according to the official standards; a small gold dish filled with incense; a young bull, a full-grown ram, and a year-old ram as sacrifices to please the Lord; a goat as a sacrifice for sin; and two bulls, five full-grown rams, five goats, and five rams a year old as sacrifices to ask the Lord's blessing. The tribal leaders brought their gifts and offerings in the following order: On the first day Nahshon from Judah, on the second day Nethanel from Issachar, on the third day Eliab from Zebulun, on the fourth day Elizur from Reuben, on the fifth day Shelumiel from Simeon, on the sixth day Eliasaph from Gad, on the seventh day Elishama from Ephraim, on the eighth day Gamaliel from Manasseh, on the ninth day Abidan from Benjamin, on the tenth day Ahiezer from Dan, on the eleventh day Pagiel from Asher, on the twelfth day Ahira from Naphtali.

And so when the altar was dedicated to the Lord, these twelve leaders brought the following gifts: 12 silver bowls and 12 silver sprinkling bowls, weighing a total of almost 28 kilograms, according to the official standards; 12 gold dishes filled with incense and weighing over a kilogram; 12 bulls, 12 full-grown rams, and 12 rams a year old as sacrifices to please the Lord, along with the proper grain sacrifices; 12 goats as sacrifices for sin; and 24 bulls, 60 full-grown rams, 60 goats, and 60 rams a year old as sacrifices to ask the Lord's blessing.

Korah, here is what you and your followers must do: Get some fire pans, fill them with coals and incense, and place them near the sacred tent. And the man the Lord chooses will be his priest. Korah, this time you Levites have gone too far!

Each of you take along your fire pan with incense in it and offer the incense to the Lord.”

The next day the men placed incense and coals in their fire pans and stood with Moses and Aaron at the entrance to the sacred tent.

Suddenly the Lord sent a fire that burned up the 250 men who had offered incense to him.

because they were used for offering incense to me. Have them hammered into a thin layer of bronze as a covering for the altar. Those men died because of their sin, and now their fire pans will become a warning for the rest of the community.”

just as the Lord had told Moses. The pans were a warning to the Israelites that only Aaron's descendants would be allowed to offer incense to the Lord. Anyone else who tried to would be punished like Korah and his followers.

Then Moses told Aaron, “Grab your fire pan and fill it with hot coals from the altar. Put incense in it, then quickly take it to where the people are and offer it to the Lord, so they can be forgiven. The Lord is very angry, and people have already started dying!”

Aaron did exactly what he had been told. He ran over to the crowd of people and stood between the dead bodies and the people who were still alive. He placed the incense on the pan, then offered it to the Lord and asked him to forgive the people's sin. The disease immediately stopped spreading, and no one else died from it.