The Old Testament law has no shortage of verses that critics love to take out of context, misapply, and then use them to harass God’s people.
Case in point: In Exodus 35:3, God interrupts His flow of thought in talking about keeping the Sabbath to elaborate on a very specific prohibition of not even kindling fire on the Sabbath.
At first glance, this seems almost out-of-place. Considering that creating a fire required substantially more labor then than it does now, it makes sense that fire kindling could be classified as work. That command could even prohibit Jews from preparing food on the Sabbath—since creating a fire and cooking food requires work—insinuating they should have prepared that beforehand.
Those arguments ignore the fact that fires fulfilled many different purposes in the ancient world. Everything from cooking to warmth to lighting a home required fire, so no fire kindling in on the Sabbath was a big deal.
You have to consider the context, though. This passage isn’t out of place; in Exodus 35-40, the entire discussion rests on building the Tabernacle. Indeed, the rest of this chapter, people are going to bring their goods and labor to contribute to the effort.
Obviously, fire would have been included in a lot of these jobs. The warning against kindling fire—in the context of Exodus 35—may have simply been a warning about continuing your labor through the Sabbath rest. Workaholics everywhere can identify with that temptation.
Some modern Jews have taken this command to an extreme degree. In researching this article, I found lots of articles talking about how modern electricity usage should be banned on the Sabbath. One company has even developed a “Sabbath-friendly” electrical outlet that uses indirect electricity for basic survival needs.
While I admire the zeal with which these laws are put into place, I also think they’re wildly out of touch with the spirit of the Law. God did tell the Jews to not kindle a fire on the Sabbath, but why? So we could all sit around in the dark?
To get around this, Jewish teaching even distinguishes between indirect and direct action on the Sabbath. For instance, while you can’t extinguish a fire on the Sabbath, because it’s work, you can open a window and let the wind do it for you. But isn’t that kind of the same thing?
I won’t go so far as to say that God doesn’t care about technicalities like that because clearly, anyone who has read the Old Law knows He is very specific. But think back to the reasoning for the Law. Why were these Laws in place? What were they regulating?
Mindless rule-keeping isn’t what God wants. What He wants are people that adhere to His teachings.
