Yesterday morning our reading schedule had us in Numbers 15, which included a rather disturbing account of a man being stoned to death for gathering sticks on the Sabbath (vv. 32-36). Here’s the passage:
While the people of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath day. And those who found him gathering sticks brought him to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation. They put him in custody, because it had not been made clear what should be done to him. And the Lord said to Moses, “The man shall be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp.” And all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death with stones, as the Lord commanded Moses.
Upon reading this, one of our fellows, Emma, texted the group with the following thoughtful question.
Confused by today’s reading, Numbers 15:32, why would God have his people murder the man who broke sabbath? My translation said he was just picking up sticks.
Now, I’m pretty well known for not giving straight answers to straight questions, so I proceeded with my usual method in response:
Good question. It’s super weird and hard to accept that God would command something so harsh for something so seemingly small.
Of course, gathering wood is not some terribly immoral thing in itself. In those days, a man could be put to death for murder or child sacrifice. And though we may even find that punishment harsh, we can understand why God would prescribe it in those extreme cases. But why would God have this man stoned? Why was this even a crime at all?”
What standard or what relationship did this man’s actions offend against? What is the meaning of this type of action on the Sabbath? What are the long term consequences for a community if such a crime were not to be taken deadly seriously? And why are we offended by the harshness of the punishment? Is it because we disbelieve in the death penalty generally (if so, do we disagree with every case in which God prescribes it in the OT; and in which people are killed by God in the NT)? Or, if we can understand that sometimes death is a just punishment, why don’t we like it in this case? Is it because we cannot imagine religious rituals could ever be as important as moral laws? Is it because we assume that mercy is always better than punishment? Is it possible that we could be more merciful than God? Or is there something we can’t see here, which if we could see it, we would thank God for his goodness, wisdom, and love (even in the face of this harsh punishment)? What do you all think?
But after that, I kept thinking about it. Why was Sabbath-breaking punishable by death? And somehow, I thought of this ridiculous video clip of Yuval Noah Harari that’s been going around recently:
And that made me think of a parable of my own. So I wrote it down. Hope you enjoy…
The Parable of the Sacred Square
Imagine you and a couple of friends travel to some super exotic country, where you have made arrangements to live, for a time, alongside a primitive tribe. When you arrive, a local representative of the tribe comes to you and says, “We welcome you here. But you must abide by our rules.”
“Okay,” you say, “What are the rules?”
“Do not lie, steal, or murder.”
“Ah, yes,” you say, “We have those same rules where we come from.”
“One more thing,” says the man. “And this is very important. Never step in the square in the center of the village.” He points to a literal square drawn out in the dirt nearby, about ten feet by ten feet. Nothing inside it, as far as you can tell. Just a square.
“I see. Why not?” you say.
The man seems confused by the question and ends up just repeating himself, “No, you never step in the square.”
“Okay,” you say. And they give you and your friends a tent among the people.
So you have now spent a few months there. The people of the village are kind and beautiful people. They’re surprisingly hospitable to outsiders like you, and you begin to feel quite at home. Sometimes you’re tempted to think that the people of this primitive village are far more sane, wise, and happy than the people you left back at home.
You have now witnessed firsthand that no one ever comes close to stepping in the square in the middle of the village. They take extra care around it, even sometimes bowing to it as they pass. You and your friends are very bothered by this. It makes no sense. At night you whisper your frustrations to one another. “There’s nothing there. Literally, it’s nothing but dirt.” You’ve asked others about it. They always answer the same:
“Oh the square. Don’t step in it.” When you ask why, they still don’t seem to understand the question. If they try to answer, they only say, “It is sacred.”
One day, a man is caught stealing a cow from another family. He had apparently planned to take it to a nearby village to sell. The villagers gather around the square—though no one steps inside, of course—and hold trial. They sentence the man to a month’s hard labor to restore the debt owed to the family from whom he stole. This makes sense to you and your friends.
A month later, shockingly, two men in the village are killed. They seem to have been murdered in cold blood by a disturbed young man who is now missing. After a couple of days, they find the murderer. They hold a trial in which the facts of the case seem clear enough. They find him guilty and then take him out of the village to put him to death. This is disturbing to you and your friends. But, you think, it’s not like they have a prison they could put him in for the rest of his life (or even for the rest of the year!). Besides, it was scary having a murderer loose in the village. So you make peace with the tribe’s decision.
Meanwhile, something has been really bothering one of your friends. He absolutely cannot make peace with the square in the middle of the village. “It’s just a square,” he complains. “It’s just a damn square. It’s not magic.” It’s late one night. Your friends try to shush him. “You know what? I’m going to prove it.” Before anyone can stop him, he’s up and out of the tent, walking over toward the square. Ignoring your hisses from the tent, he steps over the line and does a little dance on the inside of the square, then runs back to the tent.
Sure enough, nothing happens to him. You realize then that you had begun to think maybe there really was something to that square. Something like magic. How silly you were. Good thing no one saw him. “Never do that again,” you scold. “You’re crazy!” Everyone has a quiet laugh. Then you all go to sleep.
You awake in the early morning to flurry of activity. People are running back and forth outside. Small clusters of men and women are whispering to each other. Some are yelling and arguing. You stop a passerby. “What’s going on?”
“Someone has trespassed the square,” she says with unrestrained fear in her eyes.
How did they know? Maybe there is some sort of magic to the square. You look over at it. Inside the square, clear as day, you see…footprints. Oh, that’s how. Again, you chide yourself inwardly for thinking there was anything actually special about the square. Then…you panic. All they’ll have to do is trace those footprints in the square back to our tent.
You look closely, but thankfully you can’t see footprints anywhere except in the square. Everywhere around the square is too trodden to reveal any one specific set of prints. You let out a sigh of relief. But your friend is still sleeping in the tent. You need to warn him.
Just then a horn blows. A familiar sound. The whole town is being called to meeting around the square, just as it was for the thief and the murderer. Your friend walks out of the tent. You whisper to him what happened as the people gather. After a few minutes, all are convened. The meeting begins with a simple question from the chief:
“Who among us has trespassed the sacred square? Make yourself known.”
No one answers. A low eerie hum begins to spread through the crowd, almost like a prayer or a teapot not yet boiling.
Just as the silence and the hum seem to reach crescendo, your friend steps out. “No!” you want to scream. But you don’t.
“It was me.” he says. The hum stops. No one moves or says a word. “I did it. I can show you. There’s nothing to it, really. It’s not what you think. It’s just dirt. See…”
He steps in again, turns in a quick circle and steps back out, as though informing a bunch of children of some new simple fact which their primitive minds had never considered.
At this, the silence breaks. Men from every direction move toward him. Women and children—even some grown men—begin to wail as if with some long-forgotten grief. Men grab him and tie his arms behind his back. People are crying and moaning in every direction. Fear and sadness and anger merge into one resonant frequency. It slowly fades as the chief speaks again.
The proceedings are short, since all were witnesses. Your friend is found guilty of trespassing the square. The penalty is death.
Now you are wailing. You grab the arm of your local guide, the one who initially welcomed you and explained the rules.
“Wait!” you plead. “How can this be? We saw what you did with the man who stole the cow. He had to work for a month. You didn’t kill him! And—and my friend just stepped across some arbitrary line in the dirt, and you’re going to put him to death? This can’t be. I thought this place was good. I thought you were better than us. But you are far worse!” You weep some more.
The man listens patiently. After a moment, he replies, “You are right. We would never kill someone for stealing a cow. To us, a cow is not sacred.”
“But a square full of dirt is sacred!” you hiss.
He shakes his head. “I have heard there are some in your country who say that a man is nothing but blood and flesh. Do you believe this?”
This enrages you. “Are you saying I shouldn’t even care about my friend because he’s only a bit of flesh?”
“I am not,” says the man. “I do not believe that. Do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“But some people in your country do?” he says.
“Some say they do.”
“But how then can they say that murder is bad? Don’t your people have harsh punishments for murder too?”
“We do. We believe—well, at least, our ancestors who made the laws believed—that human life is sacred.”
“And do you think your ancestors did not know that if you cut a man open you would find only blood and organs?”
“No, they knew,” you admit. “But they also believed—well, many of them believed—that human beings were made in the image of God.”
At this, the man nods. “So, in your culture, to kill a man is not just a sin against flesh and blood, not even just a sin against that man, but against something higher than all men?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“It is the same here.”
“Yes, I know,” you say, “That’s why you put the murderer to death, but this is—“
“You are ignoring your own logic,” the man interrupts. “What is unseen is higher than what is seen…and more real. Sacredness precedes right and wrong. When you kill a man, you do not only sin against his flesh, but against the unseen part of him that makes him most who he is. This belief in the unseen part is what makes murder murder. Without it, he is only dirt, just like our sacred square is ‘only dirt’, according to you.”
He points to the square.
“But the square is only dirt. Nothing happened when my friend stepped inside. You saw!”
“You say your friend only stepped from one piece of dirt to another. But I could say in response that the murderer only thrusted metal into flesh. After all, that is true. I saw the wounds of my fellows villagers who died.”
“Yes, but the murderer ended lives. And life is—”
“Life is what?”
Silence. After a moment, the man continues, “You think I don’t know the square is made of dirt? Of course I do.”
Rage comes over you again. “So you believe a lie, that you know is a lie. And now you’re willing to kill for it!”
“I didn’t say that,” says the man. “I said I know the square was made of dirt. But it is not only made of dirt, any more than you or I or your friend is only made of flesh. The unseen part of the square is yet more real than what you see. If the square were only dirt, then so would you be. And the very idea of murder or theft would be nonsense. But if the square is made of more than dirt, if the square itself is sacred, as I believe it is, then everything can share in that sacredness in its own way. The rain comes from above. We do not deny its effects on the ground, which we can see. How then could we deny its source, simply because we cannot see it?”
You shake your head. “I just don’t understand why you would do this thing, for something so…trivial.”
The man looks you in the eye. “I am truly sorry about your friend. He is ignorant. Men should not die for ignorance alone. But it happens more often than you might think. Nature itself punishes in this way. You are right to mourn. If your friend could see you, and if he could see that the reason you care so much for him is the same reason we care—and care even more—about the sacred square, then he would at least begin to see the consequence of his actions. I pray he will before the end. Then he can die well, which is no small thing.”
“I still don’t understand,” you say, because you can’t think of anything better to say.
“You understand more than you think,” says the man. “If nothing is sacred, then nothing is sacred.”
I enjoy and am enlightened by your wisdom and writings, Ross. Thank you for sharing your gifts!
I think you've done a good job here, Ross... allegory is hard.