Who was the mysterious “wood gatherer” & what was his sin? | Rabbi Stewart Weiss | Beit Midrash

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Torah Portion and Tanach
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Our Parsha records a rather strange story: A man was found gathering wood on Shabbat. Those who found him brought him before Moshe, Aharon, & the whole community. He was put in custody, as it had not been specified what was to be done with someone who desecrated Shabbat. Hashem then communicated his sentence: death by stoning. But "gathering" is certainly not a capital crime, so what did he do wrong? Gemara Shabbat 96b lists possible m’lachot: Detaching the wood from the ground or chopping it from a tree; carrying it in public, or tying sticks together. According to Rabi Akiva, the wood-gatherer was Z’lofchad, whose daughters would later petition Moshe for their ancestral land. Tosfot & the Medrash say he did this as a noble act: After the sin of the spies, he did not want the nation to think that since they now would not enter Israel anyway, perhaps the Torah laws did not apply to them. So he gave his life to show that the Torah must always be upheld.

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