Shabbat 97 - What Tzelafchad did on Shabbat

"And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks upon the sabbath day." - Who was he, and what exactly was he doing? He could be carrying the wood, cutting it, or tying it into sheaves, which would all be prohibited labor on Shabbat. But what does it matter to us now? Well, it does matter. Of 39 labors, one is really not so strict - there was such a tradition. Since they did execute him in the end, the above is not non-strict.

Rabbi Akiba deduced that this man was Tzelafchad. Rabbi Yehudah ben Beteira rebuked him on two accounts. If it was Tzelafchad, why did you, Akiba, reveal what the Torah wanted to hide? And if it was not him, you are maligning a righteous person. By the way, you should not suspect good people of wrongdoing. What if you did? - Give them a blessing.

The Talmud discusses various ways of prohibited throwing on Shabbat: from a house to a house with a street in between, or from a street to another street with a house in between. It makes a difference if we look at the object flying through the street as temporarily resting there. We might also consider a house as if fully filled with soil,  and view the object as landing in the house.

Art: Man Carrying Sticks by Louisa Anne Beresford