8. Then Moses and Aaron came to the front of the tent of meeting,
9. and the Lord said to Moses:
10. Remove yourselves from this community, that I may consume them at once. But they fell prostrate.
11. Then Moses said to Aaron, “Take your censer, put fire from the altar in it, lay incense on it, and bring it quickly to the community to make atonement for them; for wrath has come forth from the Lord and the plague has begun.”
12. Aaron took his censer just as Moses directed and ran in among the assembly, where the plague had already begun among the people. Then he offered the incense and made atonement for the people,
13. while standing there between the living and the dead. And so the scourge was checked.
14. There were fourteen thousand seven hundred dead from the scourge, in addition to those who died because of Korah.
15. When the scourge had been checked, Aaron returned to Moses at the entrance of the tent of meeting.
16. The Lord now said to Moses:
17. Speak to the Israelites and get from them a staff for each ancestral house, twelve staffs in all, from all the leaders of their ancestral houses. Write each man’s name on his staff;
18. and write Aaron’s name on Levi’s staff. For each head of an ancestral house shall have a staff.