Exodus 35:3

My people of the sons of Israel, ye shall not kindle a fire in any place of your habitations on the day of the Sabbath.

YE SHALL KINDLE NO FIRE THROUGHOUT YOUR HABITATIONS UPON THE SABBATH DAY. The meaning of this verse is clearly to prohibit also on the Sabbath doing any work necessary for the preparation of food, since He said, whosoever doeth work therein shall be put to death, and He further explained that they should also not kindle fire, in order to bake bread and boil meat, for fire is needed in the preparation of all food. This had to be stated because He did not say here: “whosoever doeth ‘any manner’ of work,” just as He said in the Ten Commandments, thou shalt not do any manner of work, but instead He merely said “work” without specifying any type. Therefore we might have excluded from the general statement [whosoever doeth work …] all activity necessary for the preparation of food, for we find it said about the feast of unleavened bread, thou shalt not do work therein, and yet the preparation of food is not included [in the scope of its prohibition]. It is for this reason that here He mentioned expressly that the preparation of food is also forbidden on the Sabbath.
I have found a similar text in the Midrash: “Rabbi Nathan says: Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the Sabbath-day. Why is this said? Because it is stated, And Moses assembled all the congregation of the children of Israel.…, and as Ramban explained above. The insertion of the word “etc.” at the end of the verse mentioned in the text of Ramban, would clarify the matter completely. It is present in texts of the Mechilta. I might think that one should be allowed to light a candle, to put away food to be kept warm, and to make a fire on the Sabbath. Therefore Scripture says, Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the Sabbath-day.” This corresponds closely to that which we have said, that these works [mentioned in the Mechilta], since they are of direct benefit to the body, were not included in the first prohibition. Thus Rabbi Nathan wanted to say that the purpose of the verse here is not to prohibit baking, cooking, and the rest of the activities involved in the preparation of food, for these have already been prohibited to them by the verse, Bake that [on the sixth day of the week] which ye will bake [i.e., which ye intend to bake on the Sabbath], and seethe that which ye will seethe. But yet I might think that all activities which benefit man in such a way that the …

לא תבערו אש, seeing that in connection with the festivals the Torah wrote that work in connection with the preparation of food was permitted on such days, meaning that the handling of fire was permitted. (Exodus 12.16) Moses had specifically permitted baking and cooking (Exodus 16,23). In view of this the Torah considered it as necessary to repeat the prohibition of handling fire on the Sabbath. If this kind of work was prohibited on the Sabbath, other work which was far less urgent was certainly prohibited also.

לא תבערו אש, even though generally speaking, lighting a fire is not a productive but a destructive activity, seeing that it is an almost indispensable ingredient in most activities the Torah prohibited it as unsuitable for the Sabbath.

לא תבערו אש, “do not kindle fire;” the reason that the Torah singled out lighting a fire on the Sabbath as a forbidden activity by naming it, is that to the average person lighting a fire seems hardly as something that can be called “work.” If it had not been specifically singled out, people might have said that they would certainly not perform activities even remotely connected to creative activity, but they would never have dreamt that lighting a match would be considered by the Torah as on a par with that of sowing, ploughing, or kneading a dough, for instance. In the Talmud, tractate Shabbat folio 70, there is a dispute about whether this activity has been mentioned specifically in order to tell us that the penalty for violating it is not the same as for other work prohibitions, or that it has been singled out to tell us that even such an activity is forbidden on pain of the death penalty.