Avot298

7:
We can now turn our attention to the ten individual items listed by our mishnah as being so inimical to the orderly path of nature that their occurrence must be explained as having been ordained at the time of creation and planned to come into effect at the right time.

8:
The mouth of the earth. This phrase relates to the most serious of the rebellions that Moses had to face during his leadership of the recalcitrant Israelites. The Torah [Numbers 16] tells how Koraĥ, Moses' cousin, and Datan and Aviram, from the premier tribe of Re'uven, challenged Moses authority. As always happens in such cases they managed to recruit enough malcontents – two hundred and fifty – to constitute a real threat.

Since Moses had not appointed himself to his task – indeed, he had done everything he possibly could to avoid the task! – he was shocked. It was God who had raised him up as leader of the people.

9:
As on previous occasions, when there was rebellion against Moses, God would destroy the people entirely, as an experiment that had gone wrong, and begin afresh with a new people that Moses would generate. And once again, Moses, the true shepherd of his flock, objects:

And God relents: only the rebels will be destroyed.

It is at this point that we read that

10:
To us it would seem that a fault in the earth's crust that opens, burying several hundred people, is a natural tragedy. But to the sages it was a 'fluke of nature' that must be explained as having been pre-ordained at the very moment of creation.

To be continued.

The holiest day of the year approaches, the day which we shall spend in fasting and contrition, hopeful that true repentance will yield us yet another year in which to prove that we are not as recalcitrant as we really are. May we all be sealed in the Book of Life on this Day of Atonement. Fast well: may it be for you a profitable fast.