Most of our relationships (especially the impersonal ones) are transactional in nature. If you buy a candy bar or an airline ticket, goods and services are quantified and exchanged. We can, by the same token, hire a cleaner or a plumber – both are “clean” transactions.
But those very same services, if provided within a marriage, must not come with payment. No happily married couple “keeps score,” and stays happily married. The more obviously transactional a marriage is, the less room there is for love.
When a marriage weakens, people often “go through the motions.” We do our part, but as a quid pro quo, not out of love. In such a marriage, holding up your end (bringing in money or keeping the house clean or driving the kids around) is indeed quantified. People will stay in marriages like this because it can pay to do so. But marriages are not supposed to be loveless.
This is actually a critical tension illustrated in the Torah. G-d openly rejects the transactional offering of Cain (which was essentially paying a percentage, like protection money), preferring Abel’s carefully curated offering instead. Why? Because G-d, like a loving spouse, wants to be appreciated, not paid.
The Prophets make this point many times, essentially telling us that G-d does not want our offerings: he wants us to be nice to each other! In other words, He wants us to grow through the commandments, not merely (and mindlessly) do them.
Korach makes precisely the same mistake as Cain: because he thinks that G-d just wants to be paid, Korach immediately accepts the idea of “competing fire pans”(127 to 2!) – because of course G-d would favor whoever gave Him more! Korach simply does not understand.
The Torah links the Cain and Korach by calling the both the same name: a mincha. G-d first rejects Cain’s mincha, and Moshe subsequently calls on G-d to also reject Korach’s mincha – because neither Cain nor Korach are making an offering for the right reason. They are making transactional offerings, not offerings from love.
Korach thought that G-d’s loyalties, like that of a corrupt politician, could be purchased by the highest bidder. But G-d chose Moshe, because Moshe understood that the relationship between G-d and the people must be based on love.
P.S. There is a risk here for all of us: we often go through the motions, ticking the boxes. If we end up growing and improving ourselves, then we have made progress. But if we just go through the motions without emotional and spiritual investment, then no matter how many commandments we fulfill, we are still acting as if we were in a transactional, loveless marriage. And we know that G-d does not welcome that kind of service.