Suspicious Minds -- How and why God dealt with it then and now.

Numbers 5:11-31 Sanctification through Separation from Suspected Infidelity

Day 41 of self-isolation. Our premier just announced a re-opening plan but with all due respect, it is not worth the 13 pages it was written on, and basically says we will reopen when we reopen, but it will be very slow and very, very cautiously. I guess that after he called orderly protesters who wanted the province re-opened “yahoos”, we didn’t really expect much more. So, we all, like the famous weather groundhog, return to our cubby holes, because we haven’t seen our shadow yet. At least I have more time to get deeper into Numbers and that’s a blessing. Thank you to all those that checked us out recently – it must have been the title that did grabbed. Hopefully this one will do likewise. Read on. I am now, as I study this next passage, being reminded why you don’t hear any sermons on it and others like it.

The Passage

The last section of chapter 5 (verses 11-31) is about being separated (in order to be sanctified) from suspected infidelity. It is broken down into four sub-parts:

Verses 11-15 – describes the situation where a wife may or may not have committed adultery, and where if she had, there is no witness to it, and she is not found out. However, in either case, if the husband is overcome by a “spirit of jealousy” he is to take his wife to the priest along with an offering of jealousy, a grain offering, as a reminder of the iniquity.

Verses 16-22 – describes how the priest deals with the wife brought to her. He basically puts some dust into a portion of holy water which makes it “water of bitterness that [could bring] a curse”. The idea is that if she is innocent of adultery, she’ll be immune to the curse. If not, the Lord was to make her “thigh waste away and [her] abdomen swell”. And the woman is supposed to respond, “Amen. Amen.”

Verses 23-28 – describes how the priest writes curses on a scroll and then washes them off with the water of bitterness, which the woman then drinks. After that he takes the grain offering from her hands and waves it before the Lord and brings it to the altar. He offers a part of it up in smoke. The woman then drinks the water. If she’s guilty it will cause bitterness, a swollen abdomen, and thighs that waste away. But more importantly, she’ll become a “curse among her people”. If she’s not guilty, she will clean, free, and conceive children,

Verses 29-31—summarizes the law of jealousy which is brought into play when a wife commits adultery or when a husband suspects she does, whether she does or not. In either case, he is free from guilt, and she bears her guilt.

Thoughts on the Passage

As you can see, not a great passage to try to explain in today’s ‘gender- equality’ world. Also, not so sure who is supposed to be in the process of being sanctified here – is it the wife, or is it the husband?

Chuck Smith makes two observations worth repeating here. First, he says it really would be awful for a woman if her husband was a naturally jealous person and she had to prove her innocence weekly, having to go through all this. Secondly, he notes that woman have come a long way since those days. I would prefer to say that while God’s expressed view of how women were to be have made sense to the men of Israel in those days and the only way they would have accepted, it was in no way indicative of His own views with respect to females when He created Adam and Eve – Genesis 2:25 says both were naked and both were not ashamed. And then of course, Jesus in the New Testament has an entirely favourable view of women. For a great article on that check out Christ's View of Women. 

The whole circumstance is based on suspicion. Surely the wife would not (usually) admit to her husband that she committed adultery. It is more likely the husband senses that something is wrong and based on that hunch, wants things cleared – of course, at his wife’s expense.

On the other hand, David Guzik takes a different, more positive, approach to this whole thing when he writes:

This unique passage deals with the problem of a spirit of jealousy in a marriage. Obviously, unfounded jealousy has spoiled many a marriage, and justified jealousy has forced attention on confronting the sin of adultery - in this passage, God gives Israel a way to deal with it.

He goes on to quote Poole:

"This law was given partly to deter wives from adulterous practices, and partly to secure wives against the rage of their hard-hearted husbands, who otherwise might upon mere suspicions destroy them, or at least put them away." (Poole)

However, what the wife goes through and what the consequences are make the penalty that the adulterous woman in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel, The Scarlet Letter, seem like a piece of cake in comparison. While one can believe she would feel a great sense of relief if she is innocent, I would not want to guess what the relationship between she and her husband would be going forward. And as Matthew Henry reminds us that it was even worse if the husband could prove the wife’s adultery. In that case, the penalty was being put to death.

Guzik, quoting Wenham relates the unbinding or loosening of a woman’s hair in the process as being another “hint that she was viewed as unclean. ‘Lepers’ had to let their hair had to let their hair hang loose as a mark of their uncleanness.

“Your thigh waste” Guzik says is a euphemism for “your womb rot” so that you are not be able to have children. Also, we note, that the woman had to agree to the terms set out by the priest, by saying “Amen, so be it.” This was to be repeated twice implying she agreed to both the outcomes – the one if she is guilty and the other if she is not. She could not as Guzik points out:

"Well, I did it, but it was really all right in the sight of God. After all, we loved each other, or my husband neglected me, and …" At the very least, this ceremony demanded that sin be called sin - guilty or innocent!

The law of jealousy does in fact favor the husband. The question is why and what happened to this law, even for the Jews. Guzik, aided by Clarke, helps us out again:

"The rabbis say that the trial by the waters of jealousy was omitted after the Babylonish captivity, because adulteries were so frequent amongst them, that they were afraid of having the name of the Lord profaned by being so frequently appealed to!" (Clarke)

The rabbis also said that if the woman was guilty, the same disease would come upon the man she had committed adultery with; but they also said that even if the wife had been guilty, but her husband had been guilty of adultery also, the bitter water would have no effect on her.

Some more interesting facts about this passage. The “rabbin” (either an old dated form of the word ‘rabbi’ or to imply the rabbis collectively) also say that if the woman was guilty of adultery, the adulterous man would also die at the same time. Interesting.  Matthew Henry says that Jewish doctors had stated that if the husband himself had also committed adultery; the bitter water would not have the same negative impact on the woman. Fair is fair. Perhaps that was God’s way of delivery His word in Hosea 4:14 where it says, “I will not punish your spouses [or daughters; daughters-in-law] when they commit adultery, for you yourselves are separated (from Me) with whores.”

What else can we learn from this passage that we can apply to our lives today? Here are some thoughts:

1.     Guzik says clearly this is evidence that God does not want couples to live in a state of jealously. This was a ceremony intended to resolve the issue that arouse or was believed. We need to resolve our marital issues, especially those of jealousy.

2.     Clearly, God had to be involved as water with some dust in it does not cause those kinds of physical outcomes. Perhaps the mental stress of the guilt if one were indeed guilty would be more of a link to the physical conditions predicted.

3.     Knowing the whole community would learn about it was an incentive to faithfulness in marriage, and thus good for the whole nation.

4.     And the bottom line for Guzik in this resolve to be pure (as well as the former one in verses 5-10) was a desire “to make Israel a pure, Promised Land people in their personal relationships. You can't be a Promised Land person if your relationships with others stink! You must make restitution and get things resolved.”

5.     Secret sins are known to God, and Henry says, “sometimes are strangely brought to light in this life; however, there is a day coming when God will, by Jesus Christ, as here by the priest, judge the secrets of men according to the gospel, Romans 2:16.

6.     That God will find out some way or other says Henry, “to clear the innocence of the innocent, and to bring forth their righteousness as the light.”

May we be mindful of how God dealt with Israel and how He will deal with us.

It would be great if you would share your thoughts or questions on this blog in the comments section below or on social media.