Black Sabbath
Numbers 15: 32-36
So while the Israelites are in the wilderness, one of the party decides to that the Sabbath would be a good time to gather wood. As this is clearly work- this was not acceptable behavior. So, a community of narcs grabbed him and brought him to Moses and Aaron- (which is apparently not work?) and held him in custody to see what to do with him.
The verdict? Death by stoning. God says that the whole assembly must take him outside the camp and stone him to death.
This is quite troubling to me. First, the punishment seems quite harsh. Death for gathering wood on the Sabbath. It seems as this is the ultimate sin that could have been committed- I guess they could have tortured his family, but there's not much beyond this they could do to him.
Our culture would think of Woody as industrious, a go-getter, a hard-worker. God is clearly not rewarding that mindset here. Is He trying to stress the need for reliance on Him? No need to work that hard to provide for yourselves... I'm on it.
Is He stressing that His laws, all of them, are non-negotiable? Is there grace in this story anywhere?
Second, this seems like a punishment for the community, too. I don't want to be any part of a group stoning. I'm not interested in lining up for my throw at the blasphemous Sabbath worker. Such an experience would be life-altering and scarring. It certainly wouldn't be a morale builder.
And as someone who spends much of the year working hard on weekends, it worries me a bit that God's plan might be a little different. However- the three months off help to balance that out. Those can be my Sabbaths... right? I don't think that as non-Jewish, post resurrection followers, God plans for us to be subject to Sabbath laws- but certainly there must be some principle of resting that He's set precedent for.
It's also hard to balance this with Jesus' statement (it won't come up in our discussion here for quite some time) about Sabbath being for man and not man for Sabbaths.
So what's the story here? I don't really have an explanation- other than a comparative sigh of relief to not have been born Jewish in the time of Moses.
Numbers 15: 32-36
So while the Israelites are in the wilderness, one of the party decides to that the Sabbath would be a good time to gather wood. As this is clearly work- this was not acceptable behavior. So, a community of narcs grabbed him and brought him to Moses and Aaron- (which is apparently not work?) and held him in custody to see what to do with him.
The verdict? Death by stoning. God says that the whole assembly must take him outside the camp and stone him to death.
This is quite troubling to me. First, the punishment seems quite harsh. Death for gathering wood on the Sabbath. It seems as this is the ultimate sin that could have been committed- I guess they could have tortured his family, but there's not much beyond this they could do to him.
Our culture would think of Woody as industrious, a go-getter, a hard-worker. God is clearly not rewarding that mindset here. Is He trying to stress the need for reliance on Him? No need to work that hard to provide for yourselves... I'm on it.
Is He stressing that His laws, all of them, are non-negotiable? Is there grace in this story anywhere?
Second, this seems like a punishment for the community, too. I don't want to be any part of a group stoning. I'm not interested in lining up for my throw at the blasphemous Sabbath worker. Such an experience would be life-altering and scarring. It certainly wouldn't be a morale builder.
And as someone who spends much of the year working hard on weekends, it worries me a bit that God's plan might be a little different. However- the three months off help to balance that out. Those can be my Sabbaths... right? I don't think that as non-Jewish, post resurrection followers, God plans for us to be subject to Sabbath laws- but certainly there must be some principle of resting that He's set precedent for.
It's also hard to balance this with Jesus' statement (it won't come up in our discussion here for quite some time) about Sabbath being for man and not man for Sabbaths.
So what's the story here? I don't really have an explanation- other than a comparative sigh of relief to not have been born Jewish in the time of Moses.
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