Shit My Bible Says: Numbers 15:32-36
32 While the Israelites were in the wilderness, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. 33 Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly, 34 and they kept him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. 35 Then the LORD said to Moses, “The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp.” 36 So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the LORD commanded Moses.
I’ll let apologetics site CARM explain this one:
Gathering sticks in itself is not wrong. It could be for the purpose of providing a fire for warmth of cooking. The problem is that a man was deliberately and flagrantly gathering sticks in the open on the Sabbath day when God had commanded that no work be done on the Sabbath. This was a direct challenge to God’s authority.
Okay, so a guy was gathering wood instead of telling God how wonderful he is, as God had commanded, and for that he had to be executed. Not fined, not spanked, not ordered to perform community service, but killed. By having rocks thrown at him.
And this isn’t something Moses or one of his flunkies thought would be a good idea. God himself commands it. The same God who is, people tell me, the source of all morality.
Go out on the Sabbath some time (whether you think that’s Saturday or Sunday) and count the people doing work. Aside from firefighters, emergency room staff, police officers, and the like, who are doing truly important work that won’t wait until Monday, you’ll also doubtless find gas station attendants, store employees at the mall, football players, tech support line operators, IT guys doing maintenance on the weekend, ans so on and so forth. All of these people deserve to die violently, according to the word of the unchanging God.
If this doesn’t outrage you, what the hell’s wrong with you? And if you are outraged, doesn’t that mean your morals are better than God’s?
Shouldn’t then Moses and Aaron and the rest of the assembly have stoned themselves to death for performing their duties on the Sabbath? Or does Moses at the least get a pass since he has to pass along the words of God? Sort of a, “do as I say not as I do since the path from God’s mouth to your ass goes through my foot” kinda thing…
There’s a ministerial exception: stoning counts as doing the Lord’s work.
“who are doing truly important work that won’t wait until Monday”
Ah, but if everybody stays at home on the Sabbath, and obeys the rest of the commandments, there will be much less work for the emergency services. No traffic accidents, no crimes, fewer fires (there will be people around to stop them growing). Sure, there will be the occasional heart attack, but the victim will go straight to Heaven so why worry?
Also, the Godly have no need of IT maintenance.
Except that you can’t stay home. You need to go to temple or church to do a proper job of telling God what an absolutely super guy he is. So you’ll still have traffic accidents.
And with the sacrifices commanded in Exodus 34:19-10, there are going to be knife wounds, injuries from fighting spooked animals, and so on.
But yes, I agree that if everyone obeyed the Ten Commandments, there’d be a hell of a lot less seething of goats in their mother’s milk.
damn, they’d probably been carrying these rocks on them since the evening!