Hidden away amid the famous story in this week’s Torah portion of the spies sent to scout the land of Israel, and tucked behind the suspense and drama of false testimony, communal wailing and the punishment of 40 years wandering the desert, we find another narrative of crime and sentencing, arguably an even more confusing tale: the story of the wood gatherer.

The Torah tells us: Once, when the Israelites were in the wilderness, they came upon a man gathering wood on the Sabbath day. Those who found him as he was gathering wood brought him before Moses, Aaron and the whole community. He was placed in custody, for it had not been specified what should be done to him. Then the Lord said to Moses, “The man shall be put to death: the whole community shall pelt him with stones outside the camp.” So the whole community took him outside the camp and stoned him to death — as the Lord had commanded Moses. (Numbers 15:32-37)

There are many questions that surround this story. Who is this unnamed man? Why is Moses unsure what to do with him? Why is this story recounted at this time? And perhaps most importantly, what precisely is this man’s crime?

The man, identified only through rabbinic commentary, is known simply by his offense as the mekoshesh eitzim, the wood gatherer. Later rabbis would enumerate 39 prohibited activities on Shabbat, none of which are gathering wood. 

And so again we must ask, what injunction has this man violated?

The story opens by setting the scene: “Once, when the Israelites were in the wilderness.” The prior story of the spies ends with the punishment of 40 years wandering through the wilderness. This liminal space becomes the backdrop of not only their physical journey into the land of Israel, but also their spiritual journey as they work to shed the imprint of slavery and oppression and prepare themselves for freedom.

It is there that they encounter the mekoshesh.

Interestingly, this word is rather unusual in the Torah. In fact, it is used only in one other place: story of the Exodus.

Moses has just begun the revolt against Pharaoh, and Pharaoh, incensed, strives to show Moses who holds the power by increasing the people’s already backbreaking workload. He charges his taskmasters: “You shall no longer provide the people with straw for making bricks as heretofore; let them go and gather straw for themselves” (Exodus 5:7).

The people have to do the same amount of work as they had needed to do before, work they had hardly been able to manage in the first place, but now they have to gather their own materials as well. Pharaoh is asking them to do the impossible. He is pushing them beyond their limits.

This is the most challenging, most desperate moment of the Israelite slavery.

When the people encountered this man in the wilderness gathering, mekoshesh, he was reminding them of the most painful time in their history. He is performing the very work of the oppression that they are trying so hard to escape.

This is his sin. When the people most need to move forward, he is moving backward. He is bringing their persecution with them on their journey toward release.

And this is the lesson the Torah aims to teach.

We are always on a journey. We cannot control where the journey begins, but our choices control where they journey ends. More than that, our choices control who we are at the completion of the journey.

When one tries to hold onto the past, when one carries his history with him, he allows that history to define who he is, as in this case, literally becoming his very name.

We can choose to forge ahead or we can choose to turn back, but we can never choose to remain where we are, because if we try to remain, if we try to hold onto that which we have, if we choose to stay in the wilderness, we have already gone back.