Numbers 15:34

And they put him in ward, because it was not declared what should be done to him.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

15:30-36 Those are to be reckoned presumptuous sinners, who sin designedly against God's will and glory. Sins thus committed are exceedingly sinful. He that thus breaks the commandment reproaches the Lord. He also despises the word of the Lord. Presumptuous sinners despise it, thinking themselves too great, too good, and too wise, to be ruled by it. A particular instance of presumption in the sin of sabbath-breaking is related. The offence was gathering sticks on the sabbath day, to make a fire, whereas the people were to bake and seethe what they had occasion for, the day before, Ex 16:23. This was done as an affront both to the law and to the Lawgiver. God is jealous for the honour of his sabbaths, and will not hold him guiltless who profanes them, whatever men may do. God intended this punishment for a warning to all, to make conscience of keeping holy the sabbath. And we may be assured that no command was ever given for the punishment of sin, which, at the judgment day, shall not prove to have come from perfect love and justice. The right of God to a day of devotion to himself, will be disputed and denied only by such as listen to the pride and unbelief of their hearts, rather than to the teaching of the Spirit of truth and life. Wherein consists the difference between him who was detected gathering sticks in the wilderness on the day of God, and the man who turns his back upon the blessings of sabbath appointments, and the promises of sabbath mercies, to use his time, his cares, and his soul, in heaping up riches; and waste his hours, his property, and his strength in sinful pleasure? Wealth may come by the unhallowed effort, but it will not come alone; it will have its awful reward. Sinful pursuits lead to ruin.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Death had indeed been assigned as the penalty Exodus 31:14; Exodus 35:2; but it had not been determined how that death was to be inflicted.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

32-34. 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 wilful 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 His 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 (Ex 31:14). Their difficulty probably arose from this being the first public offense of the kind which had occurred; and the appeal might be made to remove all ground of complaint—to produce a more striking effect, so that the fate of this criminal might be a beacon to warn all Israelites in the future.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

i.e. Moses and Aaron, and the seventy rulers last mentioned.

What should be done to him, i.e. in what manner he was to be cut off, or by what kind of death he was to die, which therefore God here particularly determines; otherwise it was known in general that sabbath-breakers were to be put to death, from Exodus 31:14 35:2.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And they put him in ward,.... In a certain prison in the camp; perhaps the same in which the blasphemer was put, Leviticus 24:12; and for much the same reason:

because it was not declared what should be done to him: that is, what kind of death he should die, as Jarchi and Aben Ezra; it had been before declared that the sabbath breaker should die, but not what death he should die, Exodus 31:15; though some think it was a matter of doubt whether gathering of sticks was a breach of the sabbath, or at least such a breach of it as required death; and the answer of the Lord seems to confirm this sense, as follows.

Geneva Study Bible

And they put him in ward, because it was not declared what should be done to him.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

34. It had been declared in Exodus 31:14 f., Numbers 35:2 (both P ) that Sabbath-breaking must be punished with death, but the method of execution had not been laid down. If, however, the meaning is that they did not know what the man’s punishment should be, the present passage is independent of those in Exodus. The Jews who laid down this law in the period after the exile were sternly acting in accordance with the dictates of their conscience. But (though in early days stern punishments may have been salutary) no Christian is compelled to believe that because the law stands in the Bible it is now in accordance with the mind of God. One effect of Christian civilization has been to confine the death penalty to murderers.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 34. - They put him in ward, (cf. Leviticus 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, 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 verse 35 a), and

(2) it was understood that in such cases death was to be inflicted by stoning (see Leviticus 20:2; Leviticus 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, 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. Numbers 15:34

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The History of the Sabbath-Breaker is no doubt inserted here as a practical illustration of sinning "with a high hand." It shows, too, at the same time, how the nation, as a whole, was impressed with the inviolable sanctity of the Lord's day. From the words with which it is introduced, "and the children of Israel were in the wilderness," all that can be gathered is, that the occurrence took place at the time when Israel was condemned to wander about in the wilderness for forty years. They found a man gathering sticks in the desert on the Sabbath, and brought him as an open transgressor of the law of the Sabbath before Moses and Aaron and the whole congregation, i.e., the college of elders, as the judicial authorities of the congregation (Exodus 18:25.). They kept him in custody, like the blasphemer in Leviticus 24:12, because it had not yet been determined what was to be done to him. It is true that it had already been laid down in Exodus 31:14-15, and Exodus 35:2, that any breach of the law of the Sabbath should be punished by death and extermination, but the mode had not yet been prescribed. This was done now, and Jehovah commanded stoning (see Leviticus 20:2), which was executed upon the criminal without delay.