I should thank you for using the material - I’ve been giving a weekly dvar torah for over seven years and this is the first solid proof I’ve had that someone actually cared to remember what I’d said!

It is not unusually for the Torah to introduce unidentified characters. In addition to those that you mention, there are several other examples, such as “the refugee” that tells Avraham of Lot’s capture; “the men” that visited Avraham and then Lot; “the Egyptian man” that struck “the Hebrew man”, and “the two Hebrew men” that were apparent witnesses; the blasphemous “son of the Israelite woman and Egyptian man”; and “the man of Bnei Yisrael” that took the Midianite woman in the name of Ba’al Pe’or.

There are two general types of treatment that these individuals receive from the Torah narrative. When their identities are incidental, they remain anonomous. We do not need to know who told Avraham of Lot’s capture, nor do we need to know the names of those that visited Avraham and his nephew. They were merely messengers, and the message was not of their own making.

However, when the man has a significant role in the story, the Torah lets us know who we’re talking about. Moses’s parents are eventually named. The blasephemer is identified as the son of Shlomit bat Divri. Zimri ben Salu was the name of the man slain by Pinchus. The woodcutter is unique in the fact that even though he seems to have a central role in the story, the Torah clearly doesn’t treat him that way.

Regarding the proximity of the woodcutter to the return of the spies, Rashi and Eben Ezra assert that the story actually happened much earlier. The Ramban however, prefers a more literal chronology and places the event as per its place in the text. Rashi states that the story comes to censure Bnei Yisrael for the inability to keep the Shabbat as a people; based on the Ramban I prefer to see it as a story of encouragement and praise.

Shabbat Shalom.