Against Marcion 2.21

So too in other matters you reproach him with contradictory precepts, as fickle and unstable: forbidding work on the sabbath and yet commanding the ark to be carried around for eight days — that is, on a sabbath too — in the siege of the city of Jericho. For you do not look into the law of the sabbath either, which forbids human works, not divine. For “six days,” it says, “you shall labour and do all your works, but the seventh day is the sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work on it.” What work? Surely your own. For it follows that he took away on the sabbath those works which he had assigned above to the six days — yours, that is, human and daily ones. But carrying the ark around cannot be thought either a daily work or a human one; it was rare and sacred, and, since it came at that time from God's own command, surely divine. What this itself signified I would explain, were it not tedious to unfold the figures in all the Creator's matters, which perhaps you do not even accept. But it is more telling if you are refuted from plain facts, by the simplicity of truth, not by ingenuity. So now there is a sure distinction: the sabbath forbids human works, not divine. And therefore the man who gathered sticks on the sabbath was put to death, for he had done his own work, which the law forbade; but those who carried the ark around on sabbaths did so with impunity, for they had carried out not their own work but God's, at his own command.