1 And Moses gathered all the congregation of the children of Israel together, and said unto them, These are the words which the Lord hath commanded, that ye should do them.

2 Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you an holy day, a sabbath of rest to the Lord: whosoever doeth work therein shall be put to death.

3 Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the sabbath day.

These first three verses are a continuation of God’s laws being extended anew to Israel. God had repeated the sabbath day commandment to Moses in the mountain, and now Moses repeated it to the people.

Interestingly, this description of the commandment contains a detail that we haven’t seen before: that the Israelites are not to light a fire on the sabbath day. Other scholars have noted that while this requirement was not explicit in our previous records, it was implied by Exodus 16:23’s instruction that the people cook their double-portion of manna on the day prior and use the extra for the sabbath.

We have already discussed how the sabbath day commandments prohibit the performance of “work” in terms of pursuing one’s livelihood, but this extra restriction seems to suggest that even household labor, such as cooking, was meant to be avoided. One has to wonder just how far this expectation extended. Would a person really be expected to go through the day without performing a single household chore? Not even to pick something up off the floor and put it away? Or was this restriction only meant to apply to more strenuous activity, since lighting a fire was much more difficult then than today’s turning a knob on today’s appliances?

Suffice it to say that there are opinions and interpretations up and down the spectrum on this matter. The fact is, it seems doubtful that we have anywhere in the Old Testament the full transcript of the Lord’s commands, nor the commentary of the day that would explain whether these were eternal laws or contextual ones only. Moses was in the mountain for a full forty days, so there is definitely room for him to have received much more exhaustive detail than what we have today. Today we must depend on our own conscience, good intentions, and any divine whisperings to decide what specifications still apply to us in our age.