The above happened years after Moses killed the Egyptian guy and led a country's worth of Hebrews into the desert where they wandered aimlessly for several decades (as seen in The Ten Commandments). At some point, a troublemaker named Korah and 250 supporters banded together and aired a series of complaints about the fact that they were wandering aimlessly in the desert.
God listened carefully to their complaints, weighed their points, then made the earth eat them alive. The text does not make it clear whether or not the earth made that "OM NOM NOM" sound, so scholars are forced to speculate.
This really puts things in perspective for the anti-religion critics. They can complain all they want about religious "intolerance" and pushy evangelicals trying to censor TV and annoy people into conversion. But, that's a hell of an improvement over the situation during the Exodus, when God would feed nonbelievers to the mighty Sarlacc.
