Beginning of the End: Should Sabbath Breakers Be Stoned?

 If this man’s sin had been allowed to go unpunished, others would have been encouraged to do evil, and as a result many people would eventually have died.

The mixed multitude that came up with the Israelites from Egypt claimed to worship the true God and to have given up idolatry, but they were more or less corrupted with idolatry and irreverence. They seeded the camp with idolatrous practices and grumblings against God.

Soon someone violated the Sabbath. The Lord’s announcement that He would disinherit Israel had awakened a spirit of rebellion. One of the people, angry at being excluded from Canaan and determined to show his defiance of God’s law, dared to transgress the fourth commandment openly by going out to gather sticks on the Sabbath. During the stay in the wilderness, building fires on the seventh day had not been allowed. This rule was not to continue in the land of Canaan, but in the wilderness fire was not needed for warmth. This was a willful and deliberate decision of breaking the fourth commandment—a sin of presumption.

Moses brought the case before the Lord, and the direction was given, “The man must surely be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp” (Numbers 15:35). The sins of blasphemy and willful Sabbathbreaking received the same punishment, since they were equally an expression of contempt for God’s authority.

Many who reject the Sabbath as Jewish urge that, if it is to be kept, the penalty of death must be inflicted for its violation. But blasphemy received the same punishment as Sabbathbreaking. Though God may not now punish the transgression of His law with earthly penalties, yet in the final judgment death is the fate of those who violate His sacred laws.

During the entire forty years in the wilderness, the people were reminded of the Sabbath every week by the miracle of the manna. Yet God declares through His prophet, “They greatly defiled My Sabbaths” (Ezekiel 20:13-24). And this is listed among the reasons for keeping the  first generation out of the Promised Land.

When their period of time in the desert ended, “the people stayed in Kadesh” (Numbers 20:1). Miriam died and was buried there. From that scene of rejoicing on the shores of the Red Sea to the wilderness grave that ended a lifelong wandering—such had been the fate of millions who had come out of Egypt with high hopes. Sin had dashed the cup of blessing from their lips. Would the next generation learn the lesson?