Originally Posted by DBT

There is no way to know the circumstances, the account is too brief.

However, it is unlikely that in the history of the tribe of Israel that he was the first to careless on the Sabbath. ....

Perhaps the gatherer of sticks was just unlucky to be caught in an activity that his captors thought was excessive..

So you think the story is historically accurate?

The key elements in human thinking are not numbers but labels of fuzzy sets. -- L. Zadeh

Which explains a lot.