Was a Sabbath-breaker to be cut off from his people, or put to death?

Both phrases stand in the same verse, joined by ‘for’: “every one that defileth it shall surely be put to death: for whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people” (Exodus 31:14). The second clause gives the reason for the first; it is not a different penalty. To be ‘cut off’ (Hebrew venikhretah, from karat, ‘to cut’) does not mean to be sent into exile. It means to be removed from God’s people altogether, and here, as the next verse repeats, by death: “he shall surely be put to death” (31:15). Gill reads it so: being cut off is ‘but another phrase for being put to death’.

‘Cut off’ is the wider term. Elsewhere it is used of the judgment God himself would carry out if the people failed to act. The man who gave his child to Molech was to be stoned, and if the people of the land looked away, God would “cut him off from among his people” (Leviticus 20:2-5). Jewish interpreters such as Rashi, following the early rabbinic commentary called the Mekhilta, took the two phrases in Exodus 31:14 in this way: put to death by the judges where there were witnesses and the offender had been warned beforehand, and cut off by God where there had been no such warning. On either reading the law never offers exile in place of death, and Numbers 15 shows the sentence carried out (15:32-36).

The penalty was severe because the sabbath was the sign of the covenant between God and Israel (Exodus 31:13, 16-17), and Numbers sets the story straight after the law on sinning “presumptuously”, in open contempt of the Lord’s word (Numbers 15:30-31). It belonged to Israel’s covenant law, and no Christian church applies its penalty. Most Christians also hold that the sabbath itself was among the things that were “a shadow of things to come” (Colossians 2:16-17), though some Christians believe the commandment still binds.