Tehillim is divided into five books, with the second beginning at Chapter 42. Perek 42 begins with a surprising introduction:  Lamnatzeach, to the conductor, maskil, a thoughtful psalm, l’vnei Korach, for the sons of Korach.

How do Korach and his family have a role in Tehillim? 

First, a word on the authorship of Tehillim: If you ask any child in the street, they will tell you that Dovid Hamelech, King David, wrote the Psalms. Yet, many of the songs are attributed to different people. This one appears to be attributed to the Bnei Korach, to the sons of Korach. Other ones are attributed to Asaf, Moshe or Adam. Rashi writes that there were ten different authors of the Psalms

Truthfully, to say that a psalm reflected the thoughts of King David and also reflected the thoughts of the sons of Korach and also reflected the thoughts that we might be having in our days and thoughts that our grandparents might have been having in their days is not a contradiction. Tehillim is not a history book, it’s a reflection of feelings and emotions. It should not bother us  to have ambiguous authorship in the songs. 

Regarding our particular mizmor for the sons of Korach, there are many different opinions. Some say that the sons of Korach didn’t die after fighting against Moshe.  They wrote these songs down on parchment. Then, the rishonim say, Dovid Hamelech adapted those songs and incorporated them into Tehillim. Another approach is that Dovid Hamelech wrote these songs for the descendants of Korach who lived in his day and who served in the Mishkan and later in the Beis Hamikdash. Others are of the opinion that these Psalms were actually written by the Bnei Korach. The Ibn Ezra writes that they were written in Babylon after the times of King David

Be that as it may, the Psalm clearly has a relevance to the Bnei Korach and is worthy of examination. The Torah tells us that Korach was very upset at Moshe Rabeinu. He didn’t feel like Moshe should be the leader. He didn’t feel like Aharon should be the leader either. He rebelled against Moshe and against Aharon, and was swallowed up into the ground together with his children. But the Torah tells us “uvnei Korach lo meisu – the sons of Korah did not die”. They jumped up out of the pit yelling “Moshe emes vesoraso emes –  Moshe is true and his Torah is true ”. Until today, many have the custom to jump on Simchas Torah yelling Moshe emes vesoraso emes, Moshe is true and his Torah is true. It is not clear if the sons  themselves escaped the pit or if they left descendants behind who survived. But it is clear that they did teshuva. 

Rav Aharon Kotler is mystified by Korach and by the Bnei Korach. If you read Parshas Korach, you see that they were miraculously swallowed up into the ground, but the people weren’t convinced. A fire broke out and consumed 250 of Korach’s followers.  Still they weren’t convinced. Moshe then took a staff and they put it next to the aron hakodesh, next to the ark. He put twelve staffs next to the ark to see which one would grow flowers and signify if Aharon was the one who was supposed to be the kohen gadol. Even then, Moshe was careful to place Aharon’s staff among the other staffs so that the rebellion wouldn’t claim that it had flowered due to its proximity to the Aron. Why didn’t they give in? Just one miracle should be enough. It’s one thing to rebel against Moshe but here they are denying  miracle after miracle after miracle. 

Rav Aharon Kotler concludes that people make a very big mistake about the Korach family. They think the Korach family was bad. They think the Korach family were evil, jealous people. On the contrary, he writes, the Korach family wanted nothing more than to come closer to G-d. The Korach family were from the family of Kehas whose job was to carry the ark. There were not many people in the family of Kehas because many of them would perish because they got too close to the ark. Yet they kept on pushing closer and closer to the ark. This is a family that always wanted to be closer to the ark, closer to the luchos, closer to the ten commandments and closer to G-d even though demographically they were losing numbers. It was that same middah, that same character trait, that drove them to say Aharon can’t be the kohen gadol. “We want to do that”, they said, “We want to go into the Holy of Holies. Moshe can’t be the one to go up to Mount Sinai. We want to be the ones doing that”. 

Rav Aharon Kotler said the Korach Family made one mistake, and that is that they got bad character traits involved too: a little bit of jealousy and a little bit of haughtiness. They should have taken a step back and said “We want to be greater but we’re not quite Moshe. We’re not quite Aharon. There’s a reason why they do what they do and why we do what we do”. 

All of this is reflected in Psalm 42. This Psalm is a song of yearning, “keayal ta’arog al afikei mayim –  like the gazelle that yearns for water”. A gazelle is an animal that lives in the desert and it has methods for finding water because there’s no water in the desert. When there’s  rain or a flash flood he or she knows exactly where to find the low indentations of the Earth where the water’s going to gather. It doesn’t last there for a long time. And just like that ayal goes and runs after the water, Bnei Korach were running after Hashem. The psalm continues: “tzamah nafshi leElokim lekel chai –  my soul thirsts for Hashem, for the living G-d. Masai avo ve’eirah penei Elokim -, when can I come close to God?” 

There are also sad parts to this psalm. “my tears were my bread day and night”. The Mizmor refers to memories of amazing things from  the past. These words are echoed in the kinos and in Eichah and different types of laments. 

This Perek of Tehillim is about a group of people that yearn and yearn and sometimes mess up and sometimes even get swallowed up in the ground and burned in fires. But they continue to yearn. That’s what the Bnei Korach were all about.  

In the end, they did teshuvah. In the end, they were jumping up and down singing Moshe is true and his Torah is true, and in the end, King David was writing songs for them to sing in the Beis Hamikdash, in the Temple. How did they do that? The secret is in the words they sang: “yomam yetzaveh Hashem chasdo uvelaylah shiro imo, – Hashem gives me His kindness by day and at night His song is with me”. The Gemara explains that Hashem’s song is the Torah and the Gemara goes so far as to say that if someone sings the song of Torah at night, which nobody knows about, they’re just in their house singing the song of Torah at night, chut shel chessed mashuch alav bayom, they have a certain grace about them the entire day. People can sense it on their faces. They could be a stockbroker,  a doctor or a garbageman. They could be selling diamonds. Whatever they’re doing, people realize there’s a certain chein to them, a certain grace, and that’s because they learn Torah by night and it changes them into a certain type of person. 

That’s what happened with the Bnei Korach. The Korach family loved Torah. They loved Hashem. They loved the ark. They loved the Ten Commandments. They loved everything about it. They spent their time with it. They were yearning for it. They made some wrong turns here and there, but that yearning made it all come back and eventually they were jumping back up. Perhaps not Korach himself,  but his children were jumping back up and saying ”Moses is true. His Torah is true. We want to be in the Beis Hamikdash. We want to be in the Tabernacle. We want to be close to G-d. That’s really all we were looking for. The rest of this was all distractions”. 

I once met a fellow in Virginia Beach. He told me that he had gone to prestigious yeshivos and actually had done well in those yeshivos, but somehow he ended up hanging out in Virginia Beach all year. Hew as not exactly practicing what he had studied in yeshivah. We used to see him once in a while and he would come to shul every Yom Kippur. He wouldn’t talk a whole Yom Kippur but we would always talk after Yom Kippur. 

One year I went over to him after Yom Kippur to  wish him a good year, and he told me that he would be leaving. I asked where he was going and He replied taht he would be going to yeshivah. I couldn’t help wondering. “you’re going to yeshivah? You’ve been here for years?” Clearly he had taken some missteps and wrong turns in life. Danny looked at me and he said: ”You can’t spend so many years in yeshivah learning Torah and then spend your life on the beach”. He just couldn’t do it. He could do it for a month, a year, two years, three years. But at the end of the day, the Torah was in him and it made him yearn for something better, something greater, and he obviously didn’t stay in yeshivah forever, but he got back closer to Hashem and then he went about his life as a person that’s connected to Hashem. 

   When we think about Korach, we all think about the story of Korach rebelling and getting swallowed up in the earth, but we also need to think about the next chapter. The Bnei Korach, the sons of Korach. They kept their father’s yearning and they kept their father’s love of Torah and love of G-d and love of everything close to G-d and said this psalm of tzamah lecha nafshi, that Hashem my soul just thirsts for You and there’s nothing I want more than to come close to G-d.

(Based on a forthcoming work on Sefer Tehillim)

Audio Version: https://yaacovhaber.com/rsh/tehillim-chapter-forty-two/