The Pulpit Commentaries
Numbers 15:32-36
EXPOSITION
THE SABBATH-BREAKER (Numbers 15:32-4).
And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness. It is maintained by some that these words were intended to mark the contrast between the previous laws, which were only to be observed when the people came into their own land, and the law of the sabbath, which was strictly enforced during the period of wandering. There is no doubt that such a distinction existed in fact, but there is no reason to find the intentional assertion of it in this expression. The simpler and more natural, and therefore more probable, explanation is, that the incident was recorded after the people had left the wilderness. At the same time, there is nothing unreasonable in ascribing the narrative to Moses himself if we suppose him to have written it at the end of his life, when the people were encamped in the steppes of Moab. It seems probable that the record of the incident was inserted here as an example of a "presumptuous" sin, and of its punishment. A man that gathered sticks upon the sabbath day. This was clearly presumptuous, because the prohibition to do any work for oneself on the sabbath had been made so clear, and was so constantly forced upon their attention by the failure of the manna on that day, that ignorance could not possibly be pleaded here.
Unto all the congregation, i.e; unto the council of elders, who were the congregation by representation (see on Exodus 18:25, Exodus 18:26).
They put him in ward, (cf. Le Numbers 24:12), because it was not declared what should be done to him. This is perplexing, because the punishment of death had been decreed in Exodus 31:14, Exodus 31:15, and Exodus 35:2. It seems an evasion to say that although death had been decreed, the mode of death had not been fixed; for
(1) it was clearly part of the Divine answer that the offence was really capital (see Exodus 35:35 a), and
(2) it was understood that in such cases death was to be inflicted by stoning (see Le Exodus 20:2; Exodus 24:14; Joshua 7:25; in the last case the command was to bum the delinquents with fire, yet it was rightly taken for granted that they were to be stoned to death first). There are only two explanations which are satisfactory because they are honest.
1. The incident may possibly have occurred between the first institution of the sabbath (Exodus 16:23, Exodus 16:29) and the decree of death to those that broke it. There is nothing in the record as it stands here to contradict such an assumption.
2. It is more likely that it occurred after the departure from Sinai, and that the hesitation in dealing with the criminal was duo not to any real uncertainty as to the law, but to unwillingness to inflict so extreme and so (apparently) disproportioned a punishment for such an offence without a further appeal. If it be said that such unwillingness to carry out a plain command would have been sinful, it is sufficient to answer that Moses and Aaron and the elders were human beings, and must have shrunk from visiting with a cruel death the trivial breach of a purely arbitrary commandment.
Without the camp. That it might not be defiled (cf. Acts 7:58, and Hebrews 13:12).
And he died. He was killed not for what he did, but for doing it presumptuously, in deliberate defiance of what he knew to be the will of God. If the covenant relation was to be maintained between God and Israel, the observance of the sabbath, which was an integral part of that covenant, must be enforced, and he who willfully violated it must be cut off; and this consideration was of exceptional force in this case, as the first which had occurred, and as the one, therefore, which would govern all the rest (cf. Acts 5:5, Acts 5:10). On the punishment of stoning see Le Numbers 20:2; Numbers 24:14; Acts 7:58.
HOMILETICS
THE SABBATH OF GOD
We have here a record which is both valuable in itself as revealing the mind of God, and also valuable indirectly as revealing the mind of man. The perversity of human nature, and the extreme subtleness of superstition, are remarkably exemplified in the popular treatment of this record. It has indeed made a deep impression upon men, but that impression has been almost wholly false, and has simply led to superstition. The story of the man who picked up sticks on the Sabbath appears in every Christian age, and every Christian land; but in all cases it is the act itself which is regarded as being so awful and so fearfully avenged. Yet even under the law the act itself was lawful in the priests, as our Lord points out (Matthew 12:5), for the temple fire was supplied with wood; and under the gospel the law of the Sabbath, so far as it was outward and arbitrary, was totally repealed: it passed away like a shadow, leaving us face to face with the substance, the reality which it had obscured—viz; the eternal rest from sin and self which belongs to the kingdom of heaven (Romans 14:5; Galatians 4:10; Colossians 2:16; Hebrews 4:9, Hebrews 4:10). We keep indeed the Lord's day because as a fact it has been kept from the first, and no one has a right to ignore the universal custom of Christians; but our Sabbath is a spiritual one, for it is that ceasing from our own works by virtue of unselfishness and self-devotion which, as it is the secret of "rest" in this life, so it will be the essence of "rest" in the life to come. It follows that the popular use of this story to enforce the outward observance of a legal Sabbath is simply and purely superstitious, and directly antagonistic to its true teaching. Consider therefore—
I. THAT WHILE ALMOST ALL OTHER ORDINANCES, EVEN CIRCUMCISION AND THE PASSOVER, FELL INTO DISUSE, THE SABBATH REMAINED FIXED, INVIOLABLE, AND ETERNAL. Even so while all outward things may change, while even sacraments themselves might fail, the true Sabbath of the soul can never alter, never cease to be observed and sought. To cease from our own works by a true unselfishness; to live for others by an active love; to find our rest in contemplating good and rejoicing in it; that is to rest from our labours as God did from his, and that is the law of the holy Sabbath which can never be altered. As long as God is God, and man is man, God can only set to us, and we can only set to ourselves, this law as the law of all laws to be observed for ever.
II. THAT THE VIOLATION OF THE SABBATH-LAW WAS NOT PARDONABLE. The sentence of death was confirmed, on special appeal, by God himself. Even so whatever directly violates the law of rest, and so destroys that rest, is fatal and deadly to the soul. For as this rest is the end of all religion, and is to be heaven itself, that which directly militates against it (and that is in the deepest sense selfishness) has never forgiveness, can never be overlooked or suffered to continue.
III. THAT THE ESSENCE OF THE MAN'S CRIME WAS NOT THAT HE GATHERED STICKS ON THE SABBATH, BUT THAT HE GATHERED THEM FOR HIMSELF. For the priests were guiltless, cleaving wood for the altar on the Sabbath; and though the Jews to this day will not make a fire on the Sabbath even to save a man's life, yet it is certain that our Lord would have commended it, and that from an Old Testament point of view. Even so the essence of all sin, and the cause of all wrath, is selfishness. Selfishness is the real and only Sabbath-breaker, because it alone disturbs that Divine rest which stands in conformity to the will of God (see on Galatians 2:20; Colossians 3:3; 1 John 3:21, 1 John 3:22, c.).
IV. THAT THE DOOM OF THE SABBATH-BREAKER WAS STONING—A PUNISHMENT INFLICTED BY ALL, AND EXPRESSIVE OF UNIVERSAL CONDEMNATION. Even so the true punishment of sin is that it arrays against us both God and all good and holy beings. A selfish person would find neither sympathy nor allowance in heaven: his soul would fall crushed beneath the weight of silent disapproval and unintended reproach. And so the only way to war against a sin of selfishness upon earth is to enlist the sympathies of all good people against it.
V. THAT THE END OF THE SABBATH-BREAKER WAS DEATH, ALTHOUGH IT WAS NOT IMMEDIATELY EXECUTED. Even so spiritual death is the certain end of selfishness. Amidst the uncertainties of time indeed that death appears to be postponed; selfishness is quite consistent with some amount of religion. But the sentence of death against it is plain and irrevocable, and it will surely be carried out (Matthew 10:38, Matthew 10:39; Matthew 16:25; Luke 12:21; Romans 8:6; Philippians 2:4, Philippians 2:5, Philippians 2:21).
HOMILIES BY D. YOUNG
THE DOOM OF THE PRESUMPTUOUS ILLUSTRATED BY THAT OF THE SABBATH- BREAKER
Disobedience to the commands of God is ranged under two classes. First, that which has just been considered, disobedience through ignorance; secondly, disobedience from presumption, a bold, conscious, reckless defiance of God and following out of the promptings of self. God indicates that such conduct must be met in a corresponding way. "That soul shall be cut off from among his people, utterly cut off." Notice that while God supposed the case of the whole people sinning ignorantly, he does not make a similar supposition with regard to presumptuous sin. Unanimity in an open and deliberate defiance of God seems to be impossible. It is only too possible, however, that single men should be guilty in this matter, and an illustration of presumptuous sin, from actual life, immediately follows. The people were to be left without excuse for saying that they were in any doubt as to this dangerous sin. Where death was the punishment, the offence could not be too clearly indicated. Let us consider then the doom of the presumptuous sinner, as illustrated by that of the Sabbath-breaker.
I. THE COMMANDMENT WITH RESPECT TO THE SABBATH HAD BEEN PUT IN PECULIAR PROMINENCE. It stands among those ten solemn announcements of God's will, with respect to which we may say that all other commandments existed for them. Surely to sin against any of these was to sin presumptuously. It is reckoned the business of all men to know all the laws under which they live—ignorance is not allowed for a plea,—but with respect to the ten commandments, special means had been taken to impress them on the minds and memories of the people. Even before the fourth commandment had been formally announced, the double provision of manna on the sixth day had helped to give a peculiar significance to the seventh. So it may be said, if we are disobedient in respect of those requirements mentioned repeatedly and held out prominently by Christ and his apostles, we are sinning presumptuously. Who can deny that continued unbelief in the face of pressing requirements for faith is a presumptuous sin? Who can deny that where love and unselfish service are kept back from God and men there is presumptuous sin? Such sins persisted in, against all light, instruction, warning, and appeal, will end in a cutting off from the people, a terrible exclusion from all those gracious rewards which come to the faithful and obedient. Presumptuous sins strike at the very foundation of the throne of God.
II. THERE WAS EVERYTHING TO CALL THE ATTENTION OF THIS TRANSGRESSOR IN THE FACT THAT OTHERS WERE KEEPING THE SABBATH. None could come into the Israelite camp and mistake the Sabbath for some other day, just as none could enter an English town on the day of rest and mistake it for a working day. When the man went out gathering sticks, there was something fresh at every step he took to remind him that he was transgressing a commandment of God; a dozen steps from his own door was enough for this. He went into sin with his eyes open and his selfish will determined to disobey God. Thus also there is presumptuous sin in despising those requirements of Christ which are not only plainly and repeatedly stated by him and his apostles, but carded out, from a sincere heart, in the daily practice of many who rejoice to call themselves his servants. Every Christian who by his life and the results of it shows that in his judgment certain requirements of Christ are all important, becomes thereby a witness to convict others of presumptuous sin. To act on the principle that faith in Christ is not absolutely necessary to salvation, righteousness, and eternal life, is to run counter to the life and emphatic confession of many in all generations of the Christian era. Every life in which Christ is manifested ruling and guiding is a fresh repetition of his great requirements, a fresh evidence of presumptuous sin on the part of those who neglect these requirements.
III. THE SIN APPEARS ALL THE GREATER FROM THE ACT ITSELF BEING SO TRIFLING. The first thought of many on reading the narrative may be, "What severity for such a little offense!" But the more it is looked at the greater the offence appears. There would have been more to say for the man if the temptation had come from some great thing. If a fortune or a kingdom had been in question, then there would have been some plausibly sufficient motive for a great transgression; but to break such a commandment, to run counter to the conduct of the whole camp for a handful of sticks, does it not show how proud-hearted the man was, how utterly careless of all and any of God's regulations? Such a man would have turned to idolatry and profanity on the one hand, or to theft and even murder on the other, at very slight provocation. It was a little thing for Esau to crave a mess of pottage, but it deservedly lost him his birthright when he valued it so little. Thus have men sinned against their Saviour for the paltriest trifles. Peter moves our sympathy when he denies Jesus, for life is dear when closely threatened, and we consider ourselves lest we also he tempted; but when Judas sells his master, and such a master, for thirty pieces of silver, how abominable the act appears! Yet men are constantly turning from Jesus on considerations as paltry and sordid. They will not be religious, because such continual carefulness is required in little things. This man sinned a great and daring sin against God; he was dragged in shame before the whole congregation, and then stoned outside the camp. And what had he by way of set-off? A few sticks. If it was a little thing to do, it was just as little a thing to be left undone. Small as it was, it showed the state of the man's heart, that corroding and hopeless leprosy within, which left no other course but to cut him off from the people.
IV. THUS WE ARRIVE AT THE FULL MEASURE OF THE MAN'S INSULT TO THE MAJESTY OF GOD. We see in what way he reproaches the Lord and despises his word. If this man had gone before Moses, when with the tables in his hands he came fresh from Sinai, and if he had heaped contumely on the messenger, and spat upon the tables, he could not have done more then to show contempt than he did by the gathering of those few sticks on the day which God had claimed for his own. Human governments, with all their imperfections, look upon deliberate defiance of their authority as a thing to be punished severely; what, then, must be done where there is a deliberate defiance of the authority of God? A terrible doom awaits those who despise and ridicule God's ordinances of right and wrong. Though it may not be swift and sudden, it will assuredly be certain and complete. Those who mourn their inability to keep the law of God are separated in his sight from those who contemn that law, far as the east is from the west. Be it ours to feel with David, "rivers of waters run down my eyes, because they keep not thy law" (Psalms 119:136), and not as the fool who says in his heart, There is no God (Psalms 53:1; Psalms 19:12).—Y.
THE LAW OF THE SABBATH: A SOLEMN VINDICATION
I. THIS DOOM OF DEATH SHOWS THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SABBATH IN THE SIGHT OF GOD.
1. There was need of something special to call attention to this point. Those commandments which concerned himself directly he had to fence in a special way. Commandments against filial impiety, murder, adultery, theft, false witness, covetousness, these concerned man directly, and through him they concerned God; man, therefore, might be trusted to help in vindicating these commands. But those against polytheism, idolatry, profanity, and Sabbath-breaking concerned God directly and man only indirectly. Man, therefore, might not perceive the hurt, even though it was real and most serious. Thus it became needful for God to deal in a specially stern and impressive way with the Sabbath-breaker. His people must be made to perceive and bear in mind that he meant the seventh day to be a holy day. It was as much sacrilege to spend it in common occupations as it was to defile the ark in the holy place.
2. There was need to arrest the attention of such as kept the Sabbath in a negative rather than a positive way. God gave the Sabbath, not for idleness, but for that most valuable of all rest which is gained in quiet, undisturbed communion with God, and meditation on all his wonderful works. Those who employed the Sabbath in solemn and devout approaches to the God of the covenant were delivered from temptation to break the Sabbath. Filled with the fullness of God, there would be no room for base, transgressing thoughts. But no commandment could bring the unwilling heart to God. It might do something to keep the work of the common day away from the hands; it could do nothing to keep the thoughts of the common day out of the heart. The heart was to be sought; it could not be forced, being in its nature beyond force. Many, therefore, would keep the day negatively, in utter idleness, and this idleness itself tended to disobedience. The doing of little things would seem practically the same as doing nothing. So men had to be taught, by terrible examples, not to trifle with holy things. If a man thoughtlessly touches things dangerous to physical life, his thoughtlessness will not deliver him from fatal consequences. If a man sports with poisons, or moves carelessly among machinery, he is very likely to lose his life; so men who trifled with the Sabbath were in great peril. Safety, progress, approval, blessedness, were for those who obeyed from the heart. But those who through heedlessness of the heart disobeyed with the hand had no right to complain when death outside the camp awaited them.
II. THIS SOLEMN VINDICATION HAS AN IMPORTANT BEARING ON THE CHRISTIAN DAY OF REST. This is not the place to take up even a fragment of the interminable discussion on the obligation of the Sabbath. But is not the very fact of such a discussion evidence that the lapse of the obligation is by no means a tiring clearly and easily to be seen?
1. This solemn vindication hints to us that it is a prudent thing to be on the safe side. Thus we may both escape great dangers and secure great blessings. To spend the day of rest just as we please is a claim, not of conscience, but of self-will. It cannot be pretended that ceasing from work one day in seven is a hurt to one's self or to the world. Practically, all Christians confess the need of a day of rest. If God so blessed one day in seven to those who knew him as he might be known in the obscurities and distances of the Jewish economy, is it not reasonable to expect that in the fuller light and nearer approach of God in Christ Jesus, a seventh day of rest, rightly used, may be the means of the greatest blessing. We are now under the perfect law of liberty; and because it is a law of liberty it is all the more a law to the liberated soul. We use not our liberty for an occasion to the flesh; we ought to use it for an occasion to the Spirit. God blessed and hallowed the seventh day, because in it he rested from his work of creation. What a propriety then in keeping the first day of the week, as that in which the Christian's Master rested from temptation, toil, and his victorious struggle with death and Hades!
2. This solemn vindication should make us considerate of all who are called by the ugly name of Sabbatarian. No doubt with regard to the Sabbath there has been much of bigotry, ignorance, and of melancholy misinterpretations of the Scripture; but the weak brother who reads this narrative of the Sabbath-breaker's doom may well be excused if to stronger minds he seems ridiculously precise. Christ will deal with us as severely as his Father dealt with the Sabbath-breaker if we make one of his little ones to offend. It is necessary above all things to be safe. We must not confound the scrupulosity of the weak with the scrupulosity of the Pharisee. That, indeed, is always abominable—attending to little external things, and neglecting the weightier matters of the law. God's service, after all, whether on week day or Sunday, consists in the things we do rather than in those we refrain from doing. God, we may be sure, will take care that the day of rest is not narrowed out of harmony with the liberty of the gospel. As there were matters of necessity provided for under the law, so there is like provision under the gospel. A man of right spirit will not misinterpret the necessities. Jeremiah Horrocks, the young clergyman who first observed the transit of Venus, is said to have made his discovery on the Lord's Day, without allowing it in the least to interfere with his duties in the church. One of the most important principles of his steam-engine flashed into the mind of Watt as he was walking along Glasgow Green one Sunday morning. And it was one Sunday morning that Carey, entering his pulpit in India, received the new regulation prohibiting suttee. He at once sent for his pundit, and completed the translation into Bengalee before night.—Y.