And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man that gathered sticks upon the sabbath day.
A man that gathered sticks upon the sabbath day. This incident is evidently, narrated as an instance of presumptuous sin. The mere gathering of sticks was not a sinful act, and might be necessary for fuel to warm him, or to make ready his food. But its being done on the Sabbath altered the entire character of the action. The law of the Sabbath being a plain and positive commandment, this transgression of it was a known and willful sin, and it was marked by several aggravations: for the deed was done with unblushing boldness in broad daylight, in open defiance of the divine authority-in flagrant inconsistency with the man's religious connection with Israel, as the covenant people of God; and it was an application to improper purposes of time which God had consecrated to Himself and the solemn duties of religion.
The offender was brought before the rulers, who, on hearing the painful report, were at a loss to determine what ought to be done. That they should have felt any embarrassment in such a case may seem surprising, in the face of the Sabbath law (Exodus 31:14). Their difficulty probably arose from this being the first public offence of the kind which had occurred; and the appeal might be made to remove all ground of complaint-to produce a more striking effect, and that the fate of this criminal might be a beacon to warn all Israelites in future.
Infidels have invariably fixed on this incident as stamping upon the Mosaic legislation the brand of odious cruelty, and awarding a punishment altogether disproportionate to the offence. It is impertinent to view it with modern notions of liberty about the rights of conscience and the claims of religious toleration. Such principles are totally inapplicable to the special constitution under which the Hebrews lived, and the sensible evidence they daily enjoyed, in the presence of the cloudy column, that a living Deity protected and ruled over them. To Him they owed not only submission as the object of their worship, but the duty of faithful allegiance as Head of the state to which they belonged. The violation of the Sabbath law, therefore, was a political as well as a religious offence. Colenso infers, from the tenor of Numbers 15:32, that this record of the incident was made after the Israelites had emerged from the wilderness. Very probably; it was not until they had departed from Hazeroth that they entered into the wilderness of Paran (Numbers 12:16; Numbers 14:16: cf. Numbers 33:18 with verse 37), and they left when they approached the border of the Edomite territory.