Then, when Moses was returning thanks to God, the Lord turned His face away from him and said, “Thy servant asked of thee forgiveness so many times, and thou didst not forgive him.”
Moses answered, “O Lord, I desired that he should ask pardon of Thee and not of me.”
The Lord said, “If he had cried but once to Me, I would have forgiven him.”[[557]]
The earth swallowed Korah and seventy men, and they are retained in the earth along with all his treasures till the Resurrection Day.
Every Thursday, Korah, Dathan, and Abiram go before the Messiah, and they ask, “When wilt Thou come and release us from our prison? When will the end of these wonders be?”
But the Messiah answers them, “Go and ask the Patriarchs;” but this they are ashamed to do.[[558]]
They sit in the third mansion of Sheol, not in any lowest one; nor are they there tormented, because Korah promised to hear and obey Moses, as he was being engulfed.[[559]]
The Arabic name for Korah is Karoun, and under this name he has returned to Rabbinic legends, and the identity of Korah and Karoun has not been observed.
The Rabbis relate of Karoun that he is an evil angel, and that Moses dug a deep pit for him in the land of Gad, and cast him into it. But whenever the Israelites sinned, Karoun crept out of his subterranean dwelling and plagued them.[[560]]
This is a curious instance of allegorizing upon a false interpretation of a name. The Karoun of the Mussulmans is clearly identical with Korah, but Karoun in Hebrew means Anger, and Karoun was supposed to be the Angel of the Anger of the Lord, and the story of his emerging from his pit to punish the sinful Israelites is simply a figurative mode of saying that the anger of the Lord came upon them.