[217] So, then, the perpetrator of this great sin against God was for the time being taken into custody. But Moses was in doubt as to what should be done to him. He knew that the action deserved death, but what would be the proper method of punishment? So, then, in spirit, he approached the judgement-seat, invisible even as the spirit which sought it, and asked of the Judge Who knows all before He hears it what His sentence was.
[218] That Judge declared His decision that the man should die, and by no other death but stoning; since in him, as in the earlier culprit, the mind had been changed into a senseless stone by a deed which was the perfection of wickedness, and covered practically all the prohibitions enacted for the honouring of the seventh day.
[219] How is this? Because not merely the mechanical but also the other arts and occupations, particularly those which are undertaken for profit and to get a livelihood, are carried on directly or indirectly by the instrumentality of fire. And, therefore, he often forbids the lighting of a fire on the seventh day, regarding it as the cause which lay at the root of all and as the primary activity; and, if this ceased, he considered that other particular activities would naturally cease also.
[220] But sticks are the material for fire, so that by picking them up he committed a sin which was brother to and of the same family as the sin of burning them. And his was a double crime; it lay first in the mere act of collecting, in defiance of the commandment to rest from work, secondly in the nature of what he collected, being materials for fire which is the basis of the arts.