Numbers 5:12

Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them,.... It being an affair which concerned them: if any man's wife go aside, and commit a trespass against him; the sin of adultery, which is a going

Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man's wife go aside, and commit a trespass against him, If man's wife go aside.

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. Quest. Why was there not the same law for the trial of the husband, when the wife was jealous of him? Answ. This might be either, 1. Because the woman’ s sin is greater, because there is not only filthiness and falseness in it, which is also in the man’ s sin, but also peculiar unrighteousness in dishonouring his name and family, and transferring his estate to strangers and other men’ s children. Or, 2. Because there was not like fear of inconveniences to the husband from the jealousy of the wife, who had not that authority, and power, and opportunity for the putting away or killing of the husband as the husband had over the wive. Or, 3. Because being the inferior and the weaker sex, and more subject to jealousies and groundless suspicions, it was not thought expedient to trust them with such a power or privilege. Go aside, from the way of religion and justice, or from her faith given to her husband, or to the by-paths of falsehood and filthiness, and that either in truth, or in appearance, and in her husband’ s opinion.

Numbers 5:12 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man’ s wife go aside, and commit a trespass against him, Ver. 12. If any man’ s wife go aside.] Ad alterum, vel ad alterius torum; unde dicitur adulterium. If, as a naughty woman, she want one, when she hath her own. But how naughty are the Lithuanians, who give way to their wives to have their gallants, if Maginus belie them not, and call such connubii adiutores, prizing them far above all their acquaintances!

11–31. The Ordeal of Jealousy. Though in its present form a late priestly composition this section is evidently based upon very ancient material. Its contents find no parallel in the other Pentateuchal codes; but the custom of trial by ordeal was a very ancient feature in Israelite life, as it was in the life of many other nations, and it still has a wide prevalence, especially in Africa. The forms of ordeal differ greatly—drinking a potion (as here), being thrown into water (as in the case of suspected witches in the middle ages in Europe), walking upon heated metal, or holding it in the hand, or very frequently invoking upon oneself a curse which will come true in the event of guilt. The latter, as well as the potion, forms part of the ordeal in the present passage1 [Note: References to ordeals in other nations are given in Gray’s Numbers, pp. 44 f.] . Another Biblical instance of an ordeal appears in the story of Korah (Numbers 16:16-18), and the practice perhaps underlies Psalms 109:18, Proverbs 6:27 f. The essential element in all cases is that the accused is subjected to a test, the visible results of which will be a conclusive divine sentence of innocence or guilt. In the present instance a woman is suspected of adultery which cannot be legally proved, and her husband’s jealousy is roused. He brings her to the priest with an accompanying offering of flour. The priest places her ‘before Jehovah,’ and after dictating a curse upon herself which the woman endorses by responding ‘Amen, Amen,’ he causes her to drink a potion, consisting of holy water with two added ingredients—dust from the floor of the Tabernacle, and the written words of the curse which have been washed off into the water. If she is guilty of the charge, the potion will have a harmful effect upon her body which will prevent her being delivered of a child, but if she is innocent it will do her no harm and she will conceive seed.

THE ORDEAL FOR A WIFE, Numbers 5:11-31.It has been said that the only bliss of paradise that has survived the fall is conjugal love. But even this blessing has not survived without alloys.