Numbers 16:34 (BSB)

At their cries, all the people of Israel who were around them fled, saying, “The earth may swallow us too!”

From Numbers 16. Also in the ESV.

Commentary on Numbers 16:34

• John Calvin (Reformed), Calvin's Commentaries on Numbers 16:34: 34. And all Israel that were round about them. We must suppose that the people were standing around, expecting at a distance the event that was to take place; for they had previously retired from the tents, in token of their separation (from this wicked company.) Added from Fr.
• Matthew Henry (Presbyterian), Matthew Henry's Complete Commentary on Numbers 16:23-34: We have here the determining of the controversy with Dathan and Abiram, who rebelled against Moses, as in the next paragraph the determining of the controversy with Korah and his company, who would be rivals with Aaron. It should seem that Dathan and Abiram had set up a spacious tabernacle in the midst of the tents of their families, where they kept court, met in...
• John Gill (Reformed Baptist), Exposition of the Old and New Testaments on Numbers 16:34: And all Israel that were round about them fled at the cry of them,.... Or because of it, as Aben Ezra; their cry was so loud, their shrieks so dreadful and piercing, that the Israelites about them fled to get out of the sound of them, as well as for their own safety.
• Keil & Delitzsch (Lutheran), Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament on Numbers 16:34: Num 16:34 This fearful destruction of the ringleaders, through which Jehovah glorified Moses afresh as His servant in a miraculous way, filled all the Israelites round about with such terror, that they fled לקלם, “at their noise,” i.e., at the commotion with which the wicked men went down into the abyss which opened beneath their feet, lest, as they said, the earth should swallow them up also.