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Patriarchs and Prophets
stoned to death. Those who had been witness to the sin placed their
hands upon his head, thus solemnly testifying to the truth of the charge
against him. Then they threw the first stones, and the people who stood
by afterward joined in executing the sentence.
This was followed by the announcement of a law to meet similar
offenses: “Thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying, Whoso-
ever curseth his God shall bear his sin. And he that blasphemeth the
name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congrega-
tion shall certainly stone him: as well the stranger, as he that is born
in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the Lord, shall be put to
death.”
Leviticus 24:15, 16
.
There are those who will question God’s love and His justice in
visiting so severe punishment for words spoken in the heat of pas-
sion. But both love and justice require it to be shown that utterances
prompted by malice against God are a great sin. The retribution visited
upon the first offender would be a warning to others, that God’s name
is to be held in reverence. But had this man’s sin been permitted to
pass unpunished, others would have been demoralized; and as the
result many lives must eventually have been sacrificed.
The mixed multitude that came up with the Israelites from Egypt
were a source of continual temptation and trouble. They professed to
have renounced idolatry and to worship the true God; but their early
education and training had molded their habits and character, and they
were more or less corrupted with idolatry and with irreverence for
God. They were oftenest the ones to stir up strife and were the first to
complain, and they leavened the camp with their idolatrous practices
and their murmurings against God.
Soon after the return into the wilderness, an instance of Sabbath
violation occurred, under circumstances that rendered it a case of
peculiar guilt. The Lord’s announcement that He would disinherit
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Israel had roused a spirit of rebellion. One of the people, angry at
being excluded from Canaan, and determined to show his defiance
of God’s law, ventured upon the open transgression of the fourth
commandment by going out to gather sticks upon the Sabbath. During
the sojourn in the wilderness the kindling of fires upon the seventh
day had been strictly prohibited. The prohibition was not to extend
to the land of Canaan, where the severity of the climate would often
render fires a necessity; but in the wilderness, fire was not needed for