Adultery

See WOMAN.

1.    An unlawful commerce between one married person and another, or between a married and an unmarried person.

2.    It is also used in Scripture for idolatry, or departing from the true God. Jer 3:9.

3.    Also for any species of impurity or crime against the virtue of chastity. Mat 5:28.

4.    It is also used in ecclesiastical writer’s for a person’s invading or intruding into a bishoprick during the former bishop’s life.

5.    The word is also used in ancient customs for the punishment or fine imposed for that offence, or the privilege of prosecuting for it.

Although adultery is prohibited by the law of God, yet some have endeavored to explain away the moral turpitude of it; but it is evident, observes Paley, that, on the part of the man who solicits the chastity of a married woman, it certainly includes the crime of seduction, and is attended with mischief still more extensive and complicated: it creates a new sufferer, the injured husband, upon whose affection is inflicted a wound the most painful and incurable that human nature knows. The infidelity of the woman is aggravated by cruelty to her children, who are generally involved in their parents’ shame, and always made unhappy by their quarrel. The marriage vow is witnessed before God, and accompanied with circumstances of solemnity and religion, which approach to the nature of an oath. The married offender, therefore, incurs a crime little short of perjury, and the seduction of a married woman is little less than subornation of perjury. But the strongest apology for adultery is, the prior transgression of the other party; and so far, indeed, as the bad effects of adultery are anticipated by the conduct of the husband or wife who offends first, the guilt of the second offender is extenuated.

But this can never amount to a justification, unless it could be shown that the obligation of the marriage vow depends upon the condition of reciprocal fidelity; a construction which appears founded neither in expediency, nor in terms of the vow, nor in the design of the legislature, which prescribed the marriage rite. To consider the offence upon the footing of provocation, therefore, can by no means vindicate retaliation. "Thou shalt not commit adultery, " it must ever be remembered, was an interdict delivered by God himself. This crime has been punished in almost all ages and nations. By the Jewish law it was punished with death in both parties, where either the woman was married, or both. Among the Egyptians, adultery in the man was punished by a thousand lashes with rods, and in the woman by the loss of her nose. The Greeks put out the eyes of the adulterers. Among the Romans, it was punished by banishment, cutting off the ears, noses, and by sewing the adulterers into sacks, and throwing them into the sea, scourging, burning, &c. In Spain and Poland they were almost as severe. The Saxons formerly burnt the adulteress, and over her ashes erected a gibbet, whereon the adulterer was hanged. King Edmund in this kingdom, ordered adultery to be punished in the same manner as homicide. Canute ordered the man to be banished, and the woman to have her nose and ears cut off. Modern punishments, in different nations, do not seem to be so severe. In Britain it is reckoned a spiritual offence, and is cognizable by the spiritual courts, where it is punished by fine and penance.

See Paley’s Moral and Political Philosophy, p. 309, vol. 1: 12th edition.

The law of Moses made this crime capital, both to the man and woman; and upon clear proof, they were both to be put to death. (Lev. xx. 10.) It is somewhat remarkable, however, that in the case of the adulteress brought to Christ, we hear nothing of the man. Was it the case then, as it is but too generally now, that both the sin and the shame are thrown, with fulness of every thing blameable, upon women, while the seducers and more worthless, pass off unrebuked? yea, to the disgrace of human nature, not unfrequentlyapplauded! Not so in thine eye, blessed Lord Jesus! (See John 8. 1. 11.) It should be remarked under this article, that beside this natural adultery, noticed in the Scripture, there is a spiritual fornication of which the Lord complains, which is idolatry. (See Jer. 3: 9. Ezek. 23. 37. Hosea 2: 2.) Reader! if Jesus be the husband, that is, as the prophet calls him, the John of his people, who would forsake him for the idols of a dying world? (Hosea 2: 16. 17.)

the violation of the marriage bed. The law of Moses punished with death both the man and the woman who were guilty of this crime, Lev 20:10. If a woman was betrothed to a man, and was guilty of this infamous crime before the marriage was completed, she was, in this case, along with her paramour, to be stoned, Deu 22:22-24. When any man among the Jews, prompted by jealousy, suspected his wife of the crime of adultery, he brought her first before the judges, and informed them that in consequence of his suspicions, he had privately admonished her, but that she was regardless of his admonitions. If before the judges she asserted her innocency, he required that she should drink the waters of jealousy, that God might by these means discover what she attempted to conceal, Num 5:12, &c. The man then produced his witnesses, and they were heard. After this, both the man and the woman were conveyed to Jerusalem, and placed before the sanhedrim; the judges of which, by threats and other means, endeavoured to confound the woman, and make her confess. If she persisted in denying the fact, she was led to the eastern gate of the court of Israel, stripped of her own clothes, and dressed in black, before great numbers of her own sex. The priest then told her that if she was really innocent, she had nothing to fear; but if guilty, she might expect to suffer all that the law had denounced against her, to which she answered, “Amen, amen.” The priest then wrote the terms of the law in this form:—”If a strange man hath not come near you, and you are not polluted by forsaking the bed of your husband, these bitter waters, which I have cursed, will not hurt you: but if you have polluted yourself by coming near to another man, and gone astray from your husband,—may you be accursed of the Lord, and become an example for all his people; may your thigh rot, and your belly swell till it burst; may these cursed waters enter into your belly, and being swelled therewith, may your thighs putrefy.”

After this, the priest filled a pitcher out of the brazen vessel, near the altar of burnt offerings, cast some dust of the pavement into it, mingled something with it as bitter as wormwood, and then read the curses, and received her answer of Amen. Another priest, in the meantime, tore off her clothes as low as her bosom—made her head bare—untied the tresses of her hair—fastened her clothes, which were thus torn, with a girdle under her breast, and then presented her with the tenth part of an ephah, or about three pints, of barley meal. The other priest then gave her the waters of jealousy, or bitterness, to drink; and as soon as the woman had swallowed them, he gave her the meal in a vessel like a frying-pan into her hand. This was stirred before the Lord, and part of it thrown into the fire of the altar. If the wife was innocent, she returned with her husband, and the waters, so far from injuring her, increased her health, and made her more fruitful; but if she was guilty, she grew pale immediately, her eyes swelled; and, lest she should pollute the temple, she was instantly carried out, with these symptoms upon her, and died instantly, with all the ignominious circumstances related in the curses.

On this law of Moses, Michaelis has the following remarks:—

“This oath was, perhaps, a relic of some more severe and barbarous consuetudinary laws, whose rigours Moses mitigated; as he did in many other cases, where an established usage could not be conveniently abolished altogether. Among ourselves, in barbarous times, the ordeal, or trial by fire, was, notwithstanding the purity of our married people, in common use; and this, in point of equity,

was much the same in effect, as if the husband had had the right to insist on his wife submitting to the hazardous trial of her purity, by drinking a poisoned potion; which, according to an ancient superstition, could never hurt her if she was innocent. And, in fact, such a right is not altogether unexampled; for, according to Oldendorp’s History of the Mission of the Evangelical Brethren, in the Caribbee Islands, it is actually in use among some of the savage nations in the interior parts of Western Africa.

“Now, when in place of a poisoned potion like this, which very few husbands can be very willing to have administered to their wives, we see, as among the Hebrews, an imprecation-drink, whose avenger God himself promises to become, we cannot but be struck with the contrast of wisdom and clemency which such a

contrivance manifests. In the one case, (and herein consists their great distinction,) innocence can only be preserved by a miracle; while on the other, guilt only is revealed and punished by the hand of God himself.

“By one of the clauses of the oath of purgation, (and had not the legislator been perfectly assured of this divine mission, the insertion of any such clause would have been a very bold step indeed,) a visible and corporeal punishment was specified, which the person swearing imprecated on herself, and which God himself was understood as engaging to execute. To have given so accurate a definition of the punishment that God meant to inflict, and still more one that consisted of such a rare disease, would have been a step of incomprehensible boldness in a legislator who pretended to have a divine mission, if he was not, with the most assured conviction, conscious of its reality.

“Seldom, however, very seldom, was it likely that Providence would have an opportunity of inflicting the punishment in question. For the oath was so regulated, that a woman of the utmost effrontery could scarcely have taken it without changing colour to such a degree as to betray herself.

“In the first place, it was not administered to the woman in her own house, but she was under the necessity of going to that place of the land where God in a special manner had his abode, and took it there. Now, the solemnity of the place, unfamiliarized to her by daily business or resort, would have a great effect upon her mind. In the next place there was offered unto God what was termed an execration offering, not in order to propitiate his mercy, but to invoke his vengeance on the guilty. Here the process was extremely slow, which gave her more time for reflection than to a guilty person could be acceptable, and that, too, amidst a multitude of unusual ceremonies. For the priest conducted her to the front of the sanctuary, and took holy water, that is, water out of the priests’ laver, which stood before it, together with some earth off its floor, which was likewise deemed holy; and having put the earth in the water, he then proceeded to uncover the woman’s head, that her face might be seen, and every change on her countenance during the administration of the oath accurately observed: and this was a circumstance which, in the east, where the women are always veiled, must have had a great effect; because a woman, accustomed to wear a veil, could, on so extraordinary an occasion, have had far less command of her eyes and her countenance than a European adulteress, who is generally a perfect mistress in all the arts of dissimulation, would display. To render the scene still more awful, the tresses of her hair were loosened, and then the execration offering was put into her hand, while the priest held in his the imprecation water. This is commonly termed the bitter water; but we must not understand this as if the water had really been bitter; for how could it have been so? The earth of the floor of the tabernacle could not make it bitter. Among the Hebrews, and other oriental nations, the word bitter was rather used for curse: and, strictly speaking, the phrase does not mean bitter water, but the water of bitterness, that is, of curses. The priest now pronounced the oath, which was in all points so framed that it could excite no terrors in the breast of an innocent woman; for it expressly consisted in this, that the imprecation water should not harm her if she was innocent. It would seem as if the priest here made a stop, and again left the woman some time to consider whether she would proceed with the oath. This I infer from the circumstance of his speech not being directly continued in Num 5:21 st, which is rather the apodosis of what goes before; and from the detail proceeding anew in the words of the historian, Then, shall the priest pronounce the rest of the oath and the curses to the woman; and proceed thus.—After this stop he pronounced the curses, and the woman was obliged to declare her acquiescence in them by a repeated Amen. Nor was the solemn scene yet altogether at an end; but rather, as it were commenced anew. For the priest had yet to write the curses in a book, which I suppose he did at great deliberation; having done so, he washed them out again in the very imprecation water, which the woman had now to drink; and this water being now presented to her, she was obliged to drink it, with this warning and assurance, in the name of God, that if she was guilty, it would prove within her an absolute curse, Now, what must have been her feelings, while drinking, if not conscious of purity? In my opinion she must have conceived that she already felt an alteration in the state of her body, and the germ, as it were of the disease springing within her. Conscience and imagination would conspire together, and render it almost impossible for her to drink it out. Finally, the execration offering was taken out of her hand, and

burnt upon the altar. I cannot but think that, under the sanction of such a pugatorium, perjury must have been a very rare occurrence indeed. If it happened but once in an age, God had bound himself to punish it; and if this took place but once, (if but one woman who had taken the oath was attacked with that rare disease which it threatened,) it was quite enough to serve as a determent to all

others for at least one generation.”

This procedure had also the effect of keeping in mind, among the Jews, God’s high displeasure against this violation of his law; and though some lax moralists have been found, in modern times, to palliate it, yet the Christian will always remember the solemn denunciations of the New Testament against a crime so aggravated, whether considered in its effects upon the domestic relations, upon the moral character of the guilty parties, or upon society at large,—”Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.”

ADULTERY, in the prophetic scriptures, is often metaphorically taken, and signifies idolatry, and apostasy from God, by which men basely defile themselves, and wickedly violate their ecclesiastical and covenant relation to God, Hos 2:2; Ezekiel 16.

In the common acceptation of the word, adultery denotes the sexual intercourse of a married woman with any other man than her husband, or of a married man with any other woman than his wife. But the crime is not understood in this extent among Eastern nations, nor was it so understood by the Jews. With them, adultery was the act whereby any married man was exposed to the risk of having a spurious offspring imposed upon him. An adulterer was, therefore, any man who had illicit intercourse with a married or betrothed woman; and an adulteress was a betrothed or married woman who had intercourse with any other man than her husband. An intercourse between a married man and an unmarried woman was not, as with us, deemed adultery, but fornication; a great sin, but not, like adultery, involving the contingency of polluting a descent, of turning aside an inheritance, or of imposing upon a man a charge which did not belong to him. Adultery was thus considered a great social wrong, against which society protected itself by much severer penalties than attended an unchaste act not involving the same contingencies.

It will be seen that this Oriental limitation of adultery is intimately connected with the existence of polygamy. If adultery be defined as a breach of the marriage covenant, then, where the contract is between one man and one woman, as in Christian countries, the man as much as the woman infringes the covenant, or commits adultery, by every act of intercourse with any other woman: but where polygamy is allowed, where the husband may marry other wives, and take to himself concubines and slaves, the marriage contract cannot and does not convey to the woman a legal title that the man should belong to her alone. If, therefore, a Jew associated with a woman who was not his wife, his concubine, or his slave, he was guilty of unchastity, but committed no offence which gave a wife reason to complain that her legal rights had been infringed. If, however, the woman with whom he associated was the wife of another, he was guilty of adultery, not by infringing his own marriage covenant, but by causing a breach of that which existed between that woman and her husband. By thus excluding from the name and punishment of adultery the offence which did not involve the enormous wrong of imposing upon a man a supposititious offspring, in a nation where the succession to landed property went entirely by birth, so that a father could not by his testament alienate it from anyone who was regarded as his son—the law was enabled, with less severity than if the inferior offence had been included, to punish the crime with death. It is still so punished wherever the practice of polygamy has similarly operated in limiting the crime—not, perhaps, that the law expressly assigns that punishment, but it recognizes the right of the injured party to inflict it, and, in fact, leaves it, in a great degree, in his hands. Now death was the punishment of adultery before the time of Moses; and if he had assigned a less punishment, his law would have been inoperative, for private vengeance, sanctioned by usage, would still have inflicted death. But by adopting it into the law, those restrictions were imposed upon its operation which necessarily arise when the calm inquiry of public justice is substituted for the impulsive action of excited hands. Thus, death would be less frequently inflicted; and that this effect followed seems to be implied in the fact that the whole biblical history offers no example of capital punishment for the crime. Eventually, divorce superseded all other punishment.

It seems that the Roman law made the same important distinction with the Hebrew, between the infidelity of the husband and of the wife. ’Adultery’ was defined by the civilians to be the violation of another man’s bed, so that the infidelity of the husband to his own wife could not alone constitute the offence.

It is understood that the crime was punished among the Assyrians and Chaldeans by cutting off the nose and the ears; and this brings to mind the passage in which the prophet Ezekiel (Eze 23:25), after, in the name of the Lord, reproving Israel and Judah for their adulteries (i.e. idolatries) with the Assyrians and Chaldeans, threatens the punishment, ’they shall take away thy nose and thy ears.’ One or both of these mutilations, most generally that of the nose, were also inflicted by other nations, as the Persians and Egyptians, and even the Romans; but we suspect that among the former, as with the latter, it was less a judicial punishment than a summary infliction by the aggrieved party. It would also seem that these mutilations were more usually inflicted on the male than the female adulterer. In Egypt, however, cutting off the nose was the female punishment, and the man was beaten terribly with rods. The respect with which the conjugal union was treated in that country in the earliest times is manifested in the history of Abraham (Gen 12:19).

Adultery, Trial of

It would be unjust to the spirit of the Mosaic legislation to suppose that the trial of the suspected wife by the bitter water, called the Water of Jealousy, was by it first produced. It is to be regarded as an attempt to mitigate the evils of, and to bring under legal control, an old custom which could not be entirely abrogated.

The original usage, which it was designed to mitigate, was probably of the kind which we still find in Western Africa, where, when a party is accused of murder, adultery, or witchcraft, if he denies the crime, he is required to drink the red water, and on refusing is deemed guilty of the offence. But in Africa the drink is highly poisonous in itself, and, if rightly prepared, the only chance of escape is the rejection of it by the stomach, whereas, among the Hebrews, the ’water of jealousy,’ however unpleasant, was prepared in a prescribed manner with ingredients known to all to be perfectly innocent. It could not therefore injure the innocent, and its action upon the guilty must have resulted, not from the effects of the drink itself, but from the consciousness of having committed a horrible perjury. As regulated, then, by the law of Moses, the trial for suspected adultery by the bitter water amounted to this, that a woman suspected of adultery by her husband was allowed to repel the charge by a public oath of purgation, which oath was designedly made so solemn in itself, and was attended by such awful circumstances, that it was in the highest degree unlikely that it would be dared by any woman not supported by the consciousness of innocence. And the fact that no instance of the actual application of the ordeal occurs in Scripture, affords some countenance to the assertion of the Jewish writers, that the trial was so much dreaded by the women, that those who were really guilty generally avoided it by confession; and that thus the trial itself early fell into disuse. And if, as we have supposed, this mode of trial was only tolerated by Moses, the ultimate neglect of it must have been desired and intended by him. In later times, indeed, it was disputed in the Jewish schools, whether the husband was bound to prosecute his wife to this extremity, or whether it was not lawful for him to connive at and pardon her act, if he were so inclined. There were some who held that he was bound by his duty to prosecute, while others maintained that it was left to his pleasure.

From the same source we learn that this form of trial was finally abrogated about forty years before the destruction of Jerusalem. The reason assigned is, that the men themselves were at that time generally adulterous; and that God would not fulfill the imprecations of the ordeal oath upon the wife while the husband was guilty of the same crime (Joh 8:1-8).

Adultery, Symbolical

Adultery, in the symbolical language of the Old Testament, means idolatry and apostasy from the worship of the true God (Jer 3:8-9; Eze 16:32; Eze 23:37; also Rev 2:22). Hence an Adulteress meant an apostate church or city, particularly ’the daughter of Jerusalem,’ or the Jewish church and people (Isa 1:21; Jer 3:6; Jer 3:8-9; Eze 16:22; Eze 23:7). This figure resulted from the primary one, which describes the connection between God and his separated people as a marriage between Him and them. By an application of the same figure, ’An adulterous generation’ (Mat 12:39; Mat 16:4; Mar 8:38) means a faithless and impious generation.

Is a criminal connection between persons who are engaged, one or both, to keep themselves wholly to others; and thus it exceeds the guilt of fornication, which is the same intercourse between unmarried persons. As the highest sin of its kind, and son including all other sins of the flesh, it is forbidden in the seventh commandment. Where polygamy was allowed, as among the ancient Jews, illicit intercourse between a married man and a woman who was married, nor betrothed, constituted not adultery, but fornication.\par Fornication may be, in some sense, covered by a subsequent marriage of the parties; but adultery cannot be so healed. Hence God often compares himself to a husband jealous of his honor, Jer 31:32 ; and hence the forsaking of the true God is compared to fornication and adultery of the vilest kind, Jer 3:9 ; Eze 23:36-49 .\par By the Law of Moses, both the man and the woman who had committed adultery were punished with death, Lev 20:10 ; 21:9; Joh 8:5 . A woman suspected of this crime might, in order to clear herself, drink the "water of jealousy," as prescribed in Num 5:1-31 .\par

Adultery. Exo 20:14. The parties to this crime, according to Jewish law, were a married woman and a man who was not her husband. The Mosaic penalty was that both the guilty parties should be stoned, and it applied as well to the betrothed as to the married woman, provided she were free. Deu 22:22-24.

A bondwoman so offending was to be scourged, and the man was to make a Trespass Offering. Lev 19:20-22. At a later time, and when, owing to a Gentile example, the marriage tie became a looser bond of union, public feeling in regard to adultery changed, and the penalty of death was seldom or never inflicted. The famous trial by the water(s) of jealousy, Num 5:11-29, was probably an ancient custom, which Moses found deeply seated.

(But this ordeal was wholly in favor of the innocent, and exactly opposite to most ordeals. For the water which the accused drank was perfectly harmless, and only by a miracle, could it produce a bad effect; while in most ordeals, the accused must suffer what naturally produces death, and be proved innocent only by a miracle. Symbolically, adultery is used to express unfaithfulness to covenant vows to God, who is represented as the husband of his people).

A married woman cohabiting with a man not her husband. The prevalent polygamy in patriarchal times rendered it impossible to stigmatize as adultery the cohabitation of a married man with another besides his wife. But as Jesus saith, "from the beginning it was not so," for "He which made male and female said, They twain shall be one flesh." So the Samaritan Pentateuch reads Gen 2:24, as it is quoted in Mat 19:5. A fallen world undergoing a gradual course of remedial measures needs anomalies to be pretermitted for a time (Rom 3:25 margin; Act 17:30), until it becomes fit for a higher stage, in its progress toward its finally perfect state. God sanctions nothing but perfection; but optimism is out of place in governing a fallen world not yet ripe for it. The junction of the two into one flesh when sexual intercourse takes place with a third is dissolved in its original idea.

So also the union of the believer with Christ is utterly incompatible with fornication (1Co 6:13-18; 1Co 7:1-13; 1Ti 3:12). The sanctity of marriage in patriarchal times appears from Abraam’s fear, not that his wife will be seduced from him, but that he may be killed for her sake. The conduct of Pharaoh and Abimelech (Genesis 12; 20), implies the same reverence for the sacredness of marriage. Death by fire was the penalty of unchastity (Gen 38:24). Under the Mosaic law both the guilty parties (including those only betrothed unless the woman were a slave) were stoned (Deu 22:22-24; Lev 19:20-22). The law of inheritance, which would have been set aside by doubtful offspring, tended to keep up this law as to adultery. But when the territorial system of Moses fell into desuetude, and Gentile example corrupted the Jews, while the law nominally remained it practically became a dead letter.

The Pharisees’ object in bringing the adulterous woman (John 8) before Christ was to put Him in a dilemma between declaring for reviving an obsolete penalty, or else sanctioning an infraction of the law. In Mat 5:82 He condemns their usage of divorce except in the case of fornication. In Mat 1:19, Joseph" not willing to make the Virgin a public example (paradeigmatisai) was minded to put her away privily"; i.e., he did not intend to bring her before the local Sanhedrim, but privately to repudiate her. The trial by the waters of jealousy described in Num 5:11-29 was meant to restrain oriental impulses of jealousy within reasonable bounds. The trial by "red water" in Africa is very different, amidst seeming resemblance’s. The Israelite ingredients were harmless; the African, poisonous. The visitation, if the woman was guilty, was from God direct; the innocent escaped: whereas many an innocent African perishes by the poison. No instance is recorded in Scripture; so that the terror of it seems to have operated either to restrain from guilt, or to lead the guilty to confess it without recourse to the ordeal.

The union of God and His one church, in His everlasting purpose, is the archetype and foundation on which rests the union of man and wife (Eph 5:22-33). (See ADAM.) As he ish) gave Eve (isha) his name, signifying her formation from him, so Christ gives a new name to the church (Rev 2:17; Rev 3:12). As He is the true Solomon (Prince of peace), so she the Shulamite (Son 6:13). Hence idolatry, covetousness, and apostasy are adultery spiritually (Jer 3:6; Jer 3:8-9; Eze 16:82; Hosea 1; 2; 3; Rev 2:22). An apostate church, the daughter of Jerusalem becoming the daughter of Babylon, is an adulteress (Isa 1:21; Eze 23:4; Eze 23:7; Eze 23:37). So Jesus calls the Jews "an adulterous generation" (Mat 12:39).

The woman in Revelation 12, represented as clothed with the Sun (of righteousness), and crowned with the 12 stars (i.e. the 12 patriarchs of the Old Testament and the 12 apostles of New Testament), and persecuted by the dragon, in Revelation 17, excites the wonder of John, because of her transformation into a scarlet arrayed "mother of harlots," with a cup full of abominations, riding upon a "scarlet colored beast"; but the ten horned beast finally turns upon her, "makes her naked, eats her flesh, and burns her with fire." The once faithful church has ceased to be persecuted by conforming to the godless world and resting upon it. But the divine principle is, when the church apostatizes from God to intrigue with the world, the world, the instrument of her sin, shall at last be the instrument of her punishment. Compare as to Israel (Aholah), and Judah (Aholibah), Ezekiel

23. The principle is being illustrated in the church of Rome before our eyes. Let all professing churches beware of spiritual adultery, as they would escape its penalty.

(some form of the verb נָאִ, naaph’, μοιχεία), commonly denotes the sexual intercourse of a married woman with any other man than her husband, or of a married man with any other woman than his wife. SEE MARRIAGE.

I. Nature of the Crime. —

1. Jewish. — Among the Hebrews, as in other Oriental nations, adultery was the act whereby any married man was exposed to the risk of having a spurious offspring imposed upon him. An adulterer was, therefore, any man who had illicit intercourse with a married or betrothed woman; and an adulteress was a betrothed or married woman who had intercourse with any other man than her husband. An intercourse between a married man and an unmarried woman was simply fornication — a great sin, but not, like adultery, involving the contingency of polluting a descent, of turning aside an inheritance, or of imposing upon a man a charge which did not belong to him. Adultery was thus considered a great social wrong, against which society protected itself by much severer penalties than attended an unchaste act not involving the same contingencies.

This Oriental limitation of adultery is intimately connected with the existence of polygamy. If a Jew associated with a woman who was not his wife, his concubine, or his slave, he was guilty of unchastity, but committed no offense which gave a wife reason to complain that her legal rights had been infringed. If, however, the woman with whom he associated was the wife of another, he was guilty of adultery — not by infringing his own marriage covenant, but by causing a breach of that which existed between this woman and her husband (Michaelis, Mosaisches Recht, art. 259; Jahn’s Arcaologie, Th. 1, b. 2, § 183). SEE POLYGAMY.

2. Roman. — It seems that the Roman law made the same important distinction with the Hebrew between the infidelity of the husband and of the wife, by defining adultery to be the violation of another man’s bed (violatio tori alieni); so that the infidelity of the husband could not severe against the offense of the wife, were silent as to that of the husband

(Smith’s Dict. of Class. Antiq.). See WIFE.

3. Spiritual. — Adultery, in the symbolical language of the Old Testament, means idolatry and apostasy from the worship of the true God (Jer 3:8-9; Eze 16:32; Eze 23:37; also Rev 2:22). Hence an adulteress meant an apostate Church or city, particularly “the daughter of Jerusalem,” or the Jewish Church and people (Isa 1:21; Jer 3:6; Jer 3:8-9; Eze 16:22; Eze 23:7). This figure resulted from the primary one, which describes the connection between God and his separated people as a marriage between him and them (Jer 2:2; Jer 3:14; Jer 13:27; Jer 31:32; Hos 8:9). By an application of the same figure, “an adulterous generation” (Mat 12:39; Mat 16:4; Mar 8:38) means a faithless and impious generation. SEE FORNICATION.

II. Trial of Adultery. — The Mosaic trial of the suspected wife by the bitter water, called the water of jealousy (Num 5:11-31) — the only ordeal in use among the Israelites, or sanctioned by their law — is to be regarded as an attempt to mitigate and bring under legal control an old custom which could not be entirely abrogated. The forms of Hebrew justice all tended to limit the application of this test.

(1.) By prescribing certain facts presumptive of guilt, to be established on oath by two witnesses, or a preponderating but not conclusive testimony to the fact of the woman’s adultery.

(2.) By technical rules of evidence which made proof of those presumptive facts difficult (see the Talmudical tract Sotah, 6, 2-5).

(3.) By exempting certain large classes of women (all, indeed, except a pure Israelitess married to a pure Israelite, and some even of them) from the liability.

(4.) By providing that the trial could only be before the great Sanhedrim (Sotah, 1, 4).

(5.) By investing it with a ceremonial at once humiliating and intimidating, yet which still harmonized with the spirit of the whole ordeal as recorded in Numbers 5; but, the nuptial contract was latterly regarded. (See Simeon, Works, 2, 1.)

When adultery ceased to be capital, as no doubt it did, and divorce became a matter of mere convenience, it would be absurd to suppose that this trial was continued; and when adultery became common, as the Jews themselves confess, it would have been impious to expect the miracle which it supposed. If ever the Sanhedrim were driven by force of circumstances to adopt this trial, no doubt every effort was used, nay, was prescribed (Sotah, 1, 5, 6), to overawe the culprit and induce confession. Nay, even if she submitted to the trial, and was really guilty, some rabbis held that the effect on her might be suspended for years through the merit of some good deed (Sotah, 3, 4-6). Besides, moreover, the intimidation of the woman, the man was likely to feel the public exposure of his suspicions odious and repulsive. Divorce was a ready and quiet remedy; and the only question was, whether the divorce should carry the dowry and the property which she had brought, which was decided by the slight or grave character of the suspicions against her (Sotah, 6, 1; Gemara, Kethuboth, 7, 6; Ugolino, Uxor Heb. c. 7). If the husband were incapable, through derangement, imprisonment, etc., of acting on his own behalf in the matter, the Sanhedrim proceeded in his name as concerned the dowry, but not as concerned the trial by the water of jealousy (Sotah, 4, 6). SEE JEALOUSY.

This ordeal was probably of the kind which we still find in Western Africa, the trial by red water, as it is called, although varying among different nations in minute particulars, and a comparison of the two may suggest the real points of the evil which the law on Moses was designed to rectify, and the real advantages which it was calculated to secure. This ordeal is in some tribes confined to the case of adultery, but in others it is used in all crimes. In Africa the drink, in cases of proper ordeal, is poisonous, and calculated to produce the effects which the oath imprecates; whereas the “water of jealousy,” however unpleasant, was prepared in a prescribed manner, with ingredients known to all to be perfectly innocuous. It could not, therefore, injure the innocent; and its action upon the guilty must have resulted from the consciousness of having committed a horrible perjury, which crime, when the oath was so solemnly confirmed by the draught, and attended by such awful imprecations, was believed to be visitable with immediate death from heaven. On the Gold Coast the ordinary oath-drink (not poisonous) is used as a confirmation of all oaths, not only oaths of purgation, but of accusation, or even of obligation. In all cases it is accompanied with an imprecation that the fetish may destroy them if they speak untruly, or do not perform the terms of their obligation; and it is firmly believed that no one who is perjured under this form of oath will live an hour (Villault; Bosman). Doubtless the impression with respect to this mere oath-drink is derived from observation of the effects attending the drink used in the actual ordeal; and the popular opinion regards such an oath as of so solemn a nature that perjury is sure to bring down immediate punishment. The red water, as an ordeal, is confined to crimes of the worst class. These are murder, adultery, witchcraft. Perhaps this arises less from choice than from the fact that such crimes are not only the highest, but are the least capable of that direct proof for which the ordeal is intended as a substitute. A party is accused: if he denies the crime, he is required to drink the red water, and, on refusing, is deemed guilty of the offense. The trial is so much dreaded that innocent persons often confess themselves guilty in order to avoid it. And yet the immediate effect is supposed to result less from the water itself than from the terrible oath with which it is drunk. So the person who drinks the red water invokes the fetish to destroy him if he is really guilty of the offense with which he is charged. The drink is made by an infusion in water of pieces of a certain tree or of herbs, and, if rightly prepared, the only chance of escape is the rejection of it by the stomach, in which case the party is deemed innocent, as he also is if, being retained, it has no sensible effect, which can only be the case when the priests, who have the management of the matter, are influenced by private considerations or by reference to the probabilities of the case, to prepare the draught with a view to acquittal. The imprecations upon the accused if he be guilty are repeated in an awful manner by the priests, and the effect is watched very keenly. If the party seems affected by the draught, like one intoxicated, and begins to foam at the mouth, he is considered undoubtedly guilty, and is slain on the spot; or else he is left to the operation of the poisonous draught, which causes the belly to swell and burst, and occasions death. (Barhot, p. 126; Bosman, p. 148; Artus, in De Bry, 6:62; Villault, p. 191; Corry’s Windward Coast, p. 71; Church Missionary Paper, No. 17; Davis’s Journal, p. 24.) SEE POISON.

Traces of a similar ancient custom may be produced from other quarters. Hesiod (Theogon. 755-95) reports that when a falsehood had been told by any of the gods, Jupiter was wont to send Iris to bring some water out of the river Styx in a golden vessel; upon this an oath was taken, and if the god swore falsely he remained for a whole year without life or motion. There was an ancient temple in Sicily, in which were two very deep basins, called Delli, always full of hot and sulfurous water, but never running over. Here the more solemn oaths were taken; and perjuries were immediately punished most severely (Diod. Sic. 11:67). This is also mentioned by Aristotle, Silius Italicus, Virgil, and Macrobius; and from the first it would seem that the oath was written upon a ticket and cast into the water. The ticket floated if the oath was true, and sunk if it was false. In the latter case the punishment which followed was considered as an act of divine vengeance (q.v.). SEE OATH.

The trial for suspected adultery by the bitter water amounted to this, that a woman suspected of adultery by her husband was allowed to repel the charge by a public oath of purgation, which oath was designedly made so solemn in itself, and was attended by such awful circumstances, that it was in the highest degree unlikely that it would be dared by any woman not supported by the consciousness of innocence. And the fact that no instance of the actual application of the ordeal occurs in Scripture affords some countenance to the assertion of the Jewish writers, that the trial was so much dreaded by the women that those who were really guilty generally avoided it by confession; and that thus the trial itself early fell into disuse. And if this mode of trial was only tolerated by Moses, the ultimate neglect of it must have been desired and intended by him. In later times, indeed, it was disputed in the Jewish schools, whether the husband was bound to prosecute his wife to this extremity, or whether it was not lawful for him to connive at and pardon her act, if he were so inclined. There were some who held that he was bound by his duty to prosecute, while others maintained that it was left to his pleasure (Sotah, 16, 2). From the same source we learn that this form of trial was finally abrogated about forty years before the destruction of Jerusalem (see Wagenseil’s Sota, containing a copious commentary, with full illustrations of this subject, from rabbinical sources, Altdorf, 1674). The reason assigned is, that the men themselves were at that time generally adulterous, and that God would not fulfill the imprecations of the ordeal oath upon the wife while the husband was guilty of the same crime (Joh 8:1-8). SEE ORDEAL.

III. Penalties of Adultery. —

1. Jewish. — By excluding from the name and punishment of adultery the offense which did not involve the enormous wrong of imposing upon a man a supposititious offspring, in a nation where the succession to landed property went entirely by birth, so that a father could not by his testament alienate it from any one who was regarded as his son, the law was enabled, with less severity than if the inferior offense had been included, to punish the crime with death. It is still so punished wherever the practice of polygamy has similarly operated in limiting the crime — not, perhaps, that the law expressly assigns that punishment, but it recognises the right of the injured party to inflict it, and, in fact, leaves it, in a great degree, in his hands. Now death was the punishment of adultery before the time of Moses; and, if he had assigned a less punishment, his law would have been inoperative, for private vengeance, sanctioned by usage, would still have inflicted death. But by adopting it into the law, those restrictions were imposed upon its operation: which necessarily arise when the calm inquiry of public justice is substituted for the impulsive action of excited hands. Thus death would be less frequently inflicted; and that this effect followed seems to be implied in the fact that the whole Biblical history offers no example of capital punishment for the crime. Indeed, Lightfoot goes farther, and remarks, “I do not remember that I have anywhere, in the Jewish Pandect, met with an example of a wife punished for adultery with death. There is mention (in the Talmud, Sanhed. 242) of the daughter of a certain priest burned for committing fornication in her father’s house; but she was not married” (Hor. Hebr. ad Mat 19:8). Eventually, divorce superseded all other punishment. There are, indeed, some grounds for thinking that this had happened before the time of Christ, and we throw it out as a matter of inquiry, whether the Scribes and Pharisees, in attempting to entrap Christ in the matter of the woman taken in adultery (see infra), did not intend to put him between the alternatives of either declaring for the revival of a practice which had already become obsolete, but which the law was supposed to command, or of giving his sanction to the apparent infraction of the law, which the substitution of divorce involved (Joh 8:1-11). In Mat 5:32, Christ seems to assume that the practice of divorce for adultery already existed. In later times it certainly did; and Jews who were averse to part with their adulterous wives were compelled to put them away (Maimon. in Gerushin, c. 2). In the passage just referred to our Lord does not appear to render divorce compulsory, even in case of adultery; he only permits it in that case alone, by forbidding it in every other. SEE DIVORCE.

In the law which assigns the punishment of death to adultery (Lev 20:10), the mode in which that punishment should be inflicted is not specified, because it was known from custom. It was not, however, strangulation, as the Talmudists contend, but stoning, as we may learn from various passages of Scripture (e.g. Eze 16:38; Eze 16:40; Joh 8:5); and as, in fact, Moses himself testifies, if we compare Exo 31:14; Exo 35:2, with Num 15:35-36. If the adulteress was a slave, the guilty parties were both scourged with a leathern whip, the number of blows not exceeding forty. In this instance the adulterer, in addition to the scourging, was subject to the further penalty of bringing a trespass offering (a ram) to the door of the tabernacle, to be offered in his behalf by the priest (Lev 19:20-22). Those who wish to enter into the reasons of this distinction in favor of the slave may consult Michaelis (Mosaisches Recht, art. 264). We only observe that the Moslem law, derived from old Arabian usage, only inflicts upon a slave, for this and other crimes, half the punishment incurred by a free person. SEE SLAVERY,

The system of inheritances, on which the polity of Moses was based, was threatened with confusion by the doubtful offspring caused by this crime, and this secured popular sympathy on the side of morality until a far advanced stage of corruption was reached. Yet, from stoning being made the penalty, we may suppose that the exclusion of private revenge was intended. It is probable that, when that territorial basis of polity passed away — as it did after the captivity — and when, owing to Gentile example, the marriage tie became a looser bond of union, public feeling in regard to adultery changed, and the penalty of death was seldom or never inflicted. Thus, in the case of the woman brought under our Lord’s notice

(John 8), it is likely that no one then thought of stoning her, in fact, but there remained the written law ready for the purpose of the caviller. It is likely, also, that a divorce in which the adulteress lost her dower SEE DOWRY, and rights of maintenance, etc. (Gemara, Kethuboth, cap. 7:6), was the usual remedy suggested by a wish to avoid scandal and the excitement of commiseration for crime. The word παραδειγματίσαι (“make a public example,” Mat 1:19) probably means to bring the case before the local Sanhedrim, which was the usual course, SEE TRIAL, but which Joseph did not propose to take, preferring repudiation (Buxtorf, De Spons. et Divort. 3, 1-4), because that could be managed privately (Xciapa).

2. Roman. — As the Roman civil law defined adultery to be “the violation of another man’s bed,” the husband’s incontinence could not constitute the offense. The punishment was left to the discretion of the husband and parents of the adulteress, who, under the old law, could be put to death. The most usual mode of taking revenge against the man offending was by mutilating, castrating, or cutting off the nose or ears. The punishment assigned by the lex Julia de adulteris, instituted by Augustus, was banishment, or a heavy fine. It was decreed by Antoninus, that to sustain a charge of adultery against a wife, the husband who brought it must be innocent himself. The offense was not capital until made so by Constantine, in imitation of the Jewish law. Under Macrinus, adulterers were burnt at the stake. Under Constantius and Constans they were burnt, or sewed up in sacks and thrown into the sea. But the punishment was mitigated, under Leo and Marcian, to perpetual banishment or cutting off the nose; and, under Justinian, the wife was only to be scourged, lose her dower, and be shut up in a monastery; or, at the expiration of two years, the husband might take her back again; if he refused, she was shaven, and made a nun for life. Theodosius instituted the shocking practice of public constupration, which, however, he soon abolished.

3. Other ancient Nations. — The punishment of cutting off the nose brings to mind the passage in which the prophet Ezekiel (Eze 23:25) after, in the name of the Lord, reproving Israel and Judah for their adulteries (i.e. idolatries) with the Assyrians and Chaldeans, threatens the punishment, “they shall take away thy nose and thy ears,” which Jerome states was actually the punishment of adultery in those nations. One or both of these mutilations, most generally that of the nose, were also inflicted by other nations, as the Persians and Egyptians, and even the Romans; but we suspect that among the former, as with the latter, it was less a judicial punishment than a summary infliction by the aggrieved party (AEn. 6, 496). It would also seem that these mutilations were more usually inflicted on the male than the female adulterer. In Egypt, however, cutting off the nose was the female punishment, and the man was beaten terribly with rods (Diod. Sic. 1:89, 90). The respect with which the conjugal union was treated in that country in the earliest times is manifested in the history of Abraham (Gen 12:19). SEE HAREM.

The Greeks put out the eyes of the adulterers. In Crete adulterers were covered with wool as an emblem of their effeminacy, and carried in that dress to the magistrate’s house, where a fine was imposed on them, and they were deprived of all their privileges and their share in public business. SEE PUNISHMENT. 4. Modern. — Among savage nations at the present day the penalties of adultery are generally severe. The Mohammedan code pronounces it a capital offense. It is one of the three crimes which the prophet directs to be expiated by the blood of a Mussulman. In some parts of India it is said that any woman may prostitute herself for an elephant, and it is reputed no small glory to have been rated so high. Adultery is stated to be extremely frequent in Ceylon, although punishable with death. Among the Japanese and some other nations it is punishable only in the woman. On the contrary, in the Marian Islands, the woman is not punishable, but the man is, and the wife and her relations waste his lands, burn him out of his house, etc. Among the Chinese it is said that adultery is not capital; parents will even make a contract with the future husbands of their daughters to allow them the indulgence.

In Portugal an adulteress was condemned to the flames; but the sentence was seldom executed. By the ancient laws of France this crime was punishable with death. Before the Revolution the adulteress was usually condemned to a convent, where the husband could visit her during two years, and take her back if he saw fit. If he did not choose to receive her again by the expiration of this time, her hair was shaven, she took the habit of the convent, and remained there for life. Where the parties were poor she might be shut up in a hospital instead of a convent. The Code Napoleon does not allow the husband to proceed against his wife in case he has been condemned for the same crime. The wife can bring an action against the husband only in case he has introduced his paramour into the house where she resides. An adulteress can be imprisoned from three months to two years, but the husband may prevent the execution of the sentence by taking her back. Her partner in guilt is liable to the same punishment. Castration was the punishment in Spain. In Poland, previous to the establishment of Christianity, the criminal was carried to the market- place, and there fastened by the testicles with a nail; a razor was laid within his reach, and he had the option to execute justice on himself or remain where he was and die. The Saxons consigned the adulteress to the flames, and over her ashes erected a gibbet, on which her paramour was hanged. King Edmund the Saxon ordered adultery to be punished in the same manner as homicide; and Canute the Dane ordered that the man should be banished, and the woman have her ears and nose cut off. In the time of Henry I it was punished with the loss of the eyes and genitals. Adultery is in England considered as a spiritual offense, cognizable by the spiritual courts, where it is punished by fine and penance. The common law allows the party aggrieved only an action and damages. In the United States the punishment of adultery has varied materially at different times, and differs according to the statutes of the several states. Adultery is, moreover, very seldom punished criminally in the United States.

5. Ecclesiastical. — Constantine qualified adultery as a sacrilege which was to be punished with death. His successors went farther, and placed it on a level with parricide. But the definition of adultery remained, in general, confined to the infidelity of the wife and her accomplice, and for a long time the Church did not succeed in establishing with the Romanic nations the conviction that the infidelity of either party deserved an equal punishment. This principle was, on the other hand, carried through in the codes of most of the Christian Germanic States. The penalty was in all cases very severe, and, if there were aggravating circumstances, death. Later, especially since the eighteenth century, the penalty was reduced in all legislations to imprisonment. The canon law punished both adulterer and adulteress with excommunication, and a clergyman who was an accomplice with imprisonment for lifetime. Protestant churches, which are not impeded in the exercise of their jurisdiction by a connection with the state, generally exclude persons guilty of adultery from church membership; while state churches are mostly prevented, in this case as in others, from taking any measures. SEE DECALOGUE.

According to the canons of the Roman Church a clerk guilty of adultery was punishable by deposition and perpetual imprisonment in a monastery. Since the Reformation clerks have been deprived of their benefices for the sin of adultery. (See Stillingfleet, Eccl. Cases, p. 82.) SEE CELIBACY.

In the opinion of the Oriental Churches the marriage tie is broken by the sin of adultery, so that the husband of an adulterous wife may marry again during her lifetime. This opinion is founded on Mat 19:9. The contrary doctrine is taught by the Western Churches (Augustine, lib. 2, de Adult. Conjug. cap. 13). See Tebbs, Scripture Doctrine of Adultery and Divorce (Lond. 1822, 8vo). SEE MATRIMONY.

IV. Adulteress in the Gospel. — A remarkable example under the Jewish law in cases of this offense occurs in the account of the “woman taken in adultery” (γυνὴ ἐν μοιχείᾷ κατειλημμένη), given by one of the evangelists (Joh 7:53 to Joh 8:11), from which some have even erroneously inferred that our Savior regarded her act as venial — a view that is ably refuted by Paley (Moral Philosophy, vol. 1). It is true, great doubts exist as to the genuineness of the entire passage (see the dissertations of Dettmers, Vindiciae αὐθεντίας, etc., Frnkft. ad V. 1793; Stiludlin, Pericope de adultera veritas et authentia defenditur, Gotting. 1806), as it is omitted in very many of the early MSS. and versions, and greatly corrupted in others (see Tischendorf, 7th ed. in loc.), and rejected by numerous critics of note; yet, as it is retained in some good texts and editions, and as its presence cannot be explained by ascetic or monkish predilections (since it is not only without a trace of the rigor of these, but appears so lax in its doctrine as to involve serious difficulty in its adjustment to the ethics of all who could have been the authors of the interpolation), it seems to present strong claims to, being true history, if not entitled to its place in the evangelical narrative (see Tregelles, Account of the Text of the N.T. p. 236-242). See the arguments and advocates on both sides in Kuinol, Comment. in loc. SEE JOHN.

From this narrative, many have supposed that the woman’s accusers were themselves guilty of the crime (at that time very common, Mar 8:38; comp. Mat 19:10) which they alleged against her; and as it was not just to receive the accusations of those who are guilty of the evil of which they accuse others, our Lord dismissed them with the most obvious propriety. But it seems enough to suppose that the consciences of these witnesses accused them of such crimes as restrained their hands from punishing the adulteress, who, perhaps, was guilty, in this instance, of a less enormous sin than they were conscious of, though of another kind. It may be, too, that their malevolent design to entrap our Lord was appealed to by him, and was no slight cause of their confusion, if they wished to found a charge which might affect his life. Their intended murder was worse than the woman’s adultery; especially if, as there is reason to believe, the woman had suffered some violence. See STONING See Lesle, De historia adultere (Fkft. ad V. 1662); Osiander, De historia adultery, non adulterina (Tubing. 1751); Scherzer, De historia adultere (Lips. 1682, 1727); Dieck, Geschichte v. der Ehebrecherin vom jur. Standpunkte, in Ullmann’s Stud. u. Krit. 1832, p. 791822; Hug, De conjugii christ. vinculo indissolubili (Frib. 1816), p. 22 sq.; Schulthess, Ueb. d. Perikope v. d. Ehebrecherin, in Winer’s N. Krit. Journ. v. 257314; Heumann, Interpretatio γεωγραφίας Christi (Gotting. 1738); Hilliger, De scriptione Christi in terram (Viteb. 1672). Compare Lampe, Comment. in loc. also Alford, Olshausen, Licke, Meyer, and Tholuck, in loc. For further illustration, consult Saurin, Discours, 10, 40; Pitman, Lect. p. 407; Bragg, Miracles, 2, 227; Crit. Sac. Thes. Nov. 2, 494; Bp. Horne, Disc. 3, 335; Enfield, Sermons, 3, 202; Simeon, Works, 13, 429; Spencer, Serm. p. 188; Moysey, Serm. p. 249; Williams, Serm. 2, 266. SEE WEDLOCK.

Adultery. Strictly denotes uncleanness between a man and a woman, either of whom is married. Broadly, it includes all manner of unchastity in heart, speech, or behavior. Mat 5:27-28. According to the law of God, given by Moses, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. Lev 20:10. The mode of testing a charge made by a man accusing his wife of adultery is given, Num 5:12-31. Christ says that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. Mat 5:28. In many parts of the Scripture the church is called an adulteress when she forsakes the worship of God and practices idolatry. Isa 57:3-12; Jer 3:1-2; Jer 3:9; Jer 13:27; Eze 23:27; Mat 12:39, etc. By our Saviour adultery was made the only ground for divorce.

This was forbidden in the ten commandments; but neither there nor anywhere else is the sin defined. It seems clear, that as far as the man was concerned, if he had intercourse with a woman unless it was with a married woman, he would not be charged with adultery, though he himself might be married; indeed how could he be when he was allowed more wives than one, as well as concubines and slaves? If he committed adultery with a married woman or with one betrothed, both were to be put to death. Deu 22:22-24. With the woman it was stricter, she must have no intercourse with any man but her husband. If a man was jealous of his wife there was the ordeal of the bitter waters provided to test her innocence. Num 5:11-31. But we do not read that any man or woman was stoned for adultery, nor that any woman drank the bitter waters. We know from the New Testament that Moses had, because of the hardness of their hearts, allowed a certain looseness, and a man could divorce his wife for any cause, which was easier than bringing a suspected wife to trial. It may be that the men themselves had not good consciences, like those who brought the adulterous woman to the Lord in Joh 8:3. We have a dreadful picture of guiltiness in Judges 19: and Jeremiah charges Israel with being "as fed horses in the morning, every one neighed after his neighbour’s wife," which loudly called for judgement. Jer 5:8; Jer 13:27. The Lord declared that a man morally committed adultery (or fornication) in his heart if he lusted after a woman. Adultery had also a typical meaning. Israel had been espoused to Jehovah, but instead of being a faithful wife she had sought other lovers. "With their idols have they committed adultery." Eze 23:37. So the false church, who has Jezebel in her midst, the Lord will cast her "and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds." Rev 2:22.

Adulterers And Adulteresses

Lev_20:10; Deu_22:22; Pro_6:24-34; Pro_30:18-20; Joh_8:3-5; Heb_13:4; Jam_4:4; Rev_2:18-22.

Not Committing Adultery

Exo_20:14; Lev_18:20; Deu_5:18; Mat_19:18; Rom_13:8-9; Jam_2:11.

The Reward For Committing Adultery

Hos_4:1-3.

Who Commits Adultery

Mat_5:31-32; Mat_19:9; Mar_10:11-12; Luk_16:18; Rom_7:1-3.

Who Commits Adultery In Their Heart

Mat_5:28.

Who Does Not Commit Adultery

Rom_7:2-3.

ADULTERY (μοιχεία).—This word is used to denote the sexual intercourse of a married man or woman with any other than the person to whom he or she is bound by the marriage tie. It has sometimes been maintained that μοιχεία is confined in its use to the misdemeanours, in this respect, of the woman. That it has, however, a wider sense is evidenced by the reference which Jesus makes to the inward lust of any man after any woman (ὅτι πᾶς ὁ βλέπων γυναῖκα πρὸς τὸ ἐπιθυμῆσαι αὐτῆς ἤδη ἐμοίχευσεν αὐτήν, κ.τ.λ., Mat 5:28). The word πορνεία is also employed to describe this sin, though it has been contended that it refers solely to pre-nuptial immorality; and again we have a reference made by Jesus in His teaching to this sin, which disposes of that contention, and which establishes the fact that the married woman who commits herself in this way was said to be guilty of πορνεία (cf. παρεκτὸς λόγου πορνείας, Mat 5:32, and (εἰ) μὴ ἐπὶ πορνείᾳ Mat 19:9). In both passages just quoted Jesus makes the woman’s guilt the ground of His teaching on divorce. With these examples we may compare the words of Amo 7:17 (LXX Septuagint ) … ἠ γυνή σου ἐν τῇ πόλει πορνεύσει, κ.τ.λ, where the form of the expression incidentally but conclusively carries out our argument.

A very favourite figure of speech, by which the intimate relations of Jehovah and Israel were denoted by OT writers, was that of marriage (see, e.g., Isa 54:5; Isa 62:5, Jer 3:14, Hos 2:7; Hos 2:19-20); and accordingly in the prophetic books the defection of the Jewish people from the altars of Jehovah, and their repeated reversions to the worship and practices of their heathen neighbours, were stigmatized as ‘adultery’ (ni’ûph or ni’ûphîm, Jer 13:27, Eze 23:43; cf. Isa 57:3, Jer 3:8 f., Eze 23:37). This transference of an idea from the daily social life to the life spiritual finds its place in the teaching of Jesus, whose example in this respect is followed by writers of a subsequent period (cf. Jas 4:4). The generation in which He lived was denounced by Him, for its continued rejection of His claims, as ‘wicked and adulterous’ (γενεὰ πονηρὰ καὶ μοιχαλίς, Mat 12:39; Mat 16:4; cf. also Mar 8:38). It is, of course, possible that Jesus by these words had in view the social evils of His day, as well as the general lack of spiritual religion. ‘That nation and generation might be called adulterous literally; for what else, I beseech you, was their irreligious polygamy than continual adultery? And what else was their ordinary practice of divorcing their wives, no less irreligious, according to every man’s foolish or naughty will?’ (Lightfoot, Hor. Heb. et Talmud. ad Mat 12:39). It is not necessary, however, in the interpretation of His teaching in this and similar places to insist on such a view of His words. The entire body of the recorded teaching of Jesus betrays the most intimate acquaintance with the literature and ethical tendencies of the OT.

That exceedingly lax and immoral views of this sin were held generally by the generation in which Jesus lived, becomes evident not only from His casual references to the subject, but also from His positive teaching in answer to hostile questions addressed to Him about adultery and the kindred subject of divorce. We are also confronted with the same phenomenon in the writings, e.g., of Josephus (cf. Ant. iv. viii. 23; Vita, § 76), Sir 7:26; Sir 25:26; Sir 42:9, and in the Talmud. The result of the teaching of Hillel was of the worst description, reducing as it did the crime of adultery to the level of an ordinary or minor fault. This Rabbi actually went the length, in his interpretation of the Deuteronomic law of divorce as stated in Deu 24:1, of laying down the rule that a man might put away his wife ‘if she cook her husband’s food badly by salting or roasting it too much’ (see Lightfoot, Hor. Heb. et Talmud ad Mat 5:31), and R. ‘Akiba, improving on this instruction, interpreted the words ‘if she find no favour in his eyes’ as giving permission to a man to divorce his wife ‘if he sees a woman fairer than her.’

On the other hand, R. Shammai refused to take a view so loose and immoral, and in his exposition of the Deuteronomic permission confined the legality of divorce to cases of proved unchastity on the part of the wife. Other celebrated Rabbins took a similarly rigid view of this question, while all, of every school, were agreed that the crime of adultery demanded divorce as its punishment. The form of the question addressed to Jesus by the Pharisees (κατὰ πᾶσαν αἱτίαν) in Mat 19:3 shows the nature of the controversy between the rival Rabbinical schools, and also lets us see how far the pernicious teaching of the school of Hillel had permeated the social fabric. Men’s ideas about this sin were also debased by the polygamous habits then prevalent. Of Herod the Great we read that he had ten wives; which, according to Josephus, was not only permissible, but had actually become a common occurrence amongst the Jews, ‘it being of old permitted to the Jews to marry many wives’ (BJ i. xxiv. 2). In another place the same historian remarks, in connexion with the story of the Herodian family, that ‘it is the ancient practice among us to have many wives at the same time’ (Ant. xvii. i. 2). There seems to have been no hard and fast rule limiting the number of wives permissible to each man, but their teachers advised them to restrict themselves to four or five (cf. Schürer, HJ^{P [Note: JP History of the Jewish People.]} i. i. 455, note 125).

From these observations we see what an important bearing the teaching of Jesus had on the current conceptions of sexual morality obtaining amongst His countrymen. It is quite in harmony with His method of instruction to reduce the overt commission of a sin to the element out of which it originates and takes its shape. ‘A corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit’ (Mat 7:17 f., cf. Mat 12:33 and Luk 6:43 f.), and the heart corrupted by evil desire fructifies, just as surely, by an inexorable law of nature. There exists within the man whose inner life is thus tainted not merely latent or germinal sin, such as may or may not yet issue in deeds of wrong. The lustful eye gazing with sinful longing is the consummation,—the fruit of the corrupt tree,—and so far as the man’s will is concerned, the sinful act is completed (Mat 5:28). The note of sternness which characterizes this teaching is not altogether original, as will be seen if we refer to such commands as are found, e.g., in Exo 20:17, Pro 6:25, Sir 9:8 etc., and to such interpretative sayings in the Talmud as forbade the gazing upon ‘a woman’s heel’ or even upon her ‘little finger’ (cf. Lightfoot, Hor. Heb. et Talmud. ad Mat 5:28). The ethical foundation, however, upon which Jesus based His doctrine strikes the reader as being the deepest and the firmest of any that had as yet been revealed on the subject; and this must have seemed to His hearers to be not the least remarkable of those luminous addresses by which He contradicted the laboriously minute guidance of their moral and religious guides. We are not concerned here to inquire whether Jesus put no difference between the guilt of the man who, though he has lustful desires, abstains from carrying them into practice, and that of the man who completes them by the sinful act. Common sense forbids us to suppose that Jesus put out of sight the social aspects of the question when He discussed it. What is of importance is to note the lofty tone assumed by Him when engaged in inculcating the absolute necessity of sexual purity. Nor is it possible to infer that Jesus confined His remarks to the case of those who were married. The general terms into which He casts His instruction (πᾶς ὁ βλέπων) forbids us to assume that γυναῖκα and ἐμοίχευσεν are to be limited to the post-nuptial sin with a married woman. It gives a much more fitting as well as a truer meaning to Jesus’ words if we think of Him as giving directions for the guidance of the entire social and ethical life to all members of society whether married or otherwise.

According to the laws of the ancients, those guilty of adultery were to be put to death, whether by burning (Gen 38:24) or by stoning (Joh 8:5, cf. Deu 22:23 ff., Lev 20:10, Eze 18:11 ff.). This punishment was not, however, universally prescribed; for where the woman was a slave, and consequently not the owner of her own person, the man was exonerated by presenting a guilt-offering (Lev 19:20 ff.). It is doubtful, indeed, if ever capital punishment was insisted on. Lightfoot, for example, says: ‘I do not remember that I have anywhere in the Jewish pandect read any example of a wife punished with death for adultery’ (Horae Heb. et Talmud. ad Mat 19:8). This statement is borne out by such incidental references as we have in Mat 1:19, where Joseph receives the praise of his contemporaries (δίκαιος ὤν) for his merciful intention; and if the story of Hosea’s wife is to be taken literally, we have an OT example of mercy towards the guilty being recommended, and even of divorce not being suggested as a punishment. Jesus Himself also leaned to the side of mercy; and nowhere does the tenderness of His solicitude for the guilty sinner appear so deep as in the traditional, yet doubtless genuine, narrative incorporated in the Fourth Gospel (Joh 7:53 to Joh 8:11). For a discussion of the ‘pericope adulterae’ see Blass, Ev. sec. Lucam, Pref. p. xlvii, and his Philology of the Gospels, pp. 155–163.

A closer examination than we have as yet attempted in this place, of the words and teaching of Jesus Christ will reveal some startling results, and furnish obvious reasons to explain the difficulties which have been always felt on the relations of adultery, divorce, and remarriage, by Christian thinkers and legislators. A comparative examination of the passages in the Synoptic writers (Mat 5:32; Mat 19:9, Mar 10:11 f., Luk 16:18) discloses a peculiar addition to the words and teaching in the first of these places. According to Mat 5:32, Jesus asserts that the wife who is wrongfully divorced is involved compulsorily in the guilt of her husband. He is not only an adulterer himself (Luk 16:18), but ‘he causes her to be an adulteress,’ or rather ‘he makes her to commit adultery’ (ποιεῖ αὐτὴν μοιχευθῆναι). The interpretation which would explain these words as if they meant that the divorced wife is placed in such a position that she probably will commit adultery by marrying another man, is manifestly unsatisfactory. The statement in unqualified even if we are absolutely convinced of the genuineness of the succeeding words, ‘καὶ δς … μοιχᾶται.’ [They are omitted by DH, see W^{H [Note: H Westcott and Hort’s text.]} , New Test. in Greek]. It is as if Jesus said: ‘The wife who is divorced is, in virtue of her false position, an adulteress though she be innocent, and the man who marries her while she occupies that position becomes a willing partner in her guilt.’ It is not too much to say that, in this place, we have a glimpse of the profound depth which Jesus was accustomed to sound in His ethical teaching. Marriage is a Divine institution, and has its roots in the eternal order of things (cf. Mat 19:4-6). It results in a mystical union so close that the married pair are no longer two; they have become ‘one flesh.’ With this we may compare the teaching which St. Paul embodies in a few luminous words based on his Christological doctrine (Eph 5:22-33 especially Eph 5:28-29), and of which he says ‘this mystery is great.’

We have thus a clue to the meaning of the difficult expression ποιεῖ αὐτὴν μοιχευθῆναι. Any mode of conduct or action which tends to mar or set at nought the mysterious relationship of marriage is of the essence of adultery. Perhaps we shall not be considered to be importing more meaning into words than they were originally intended to convey, if we press the Markan addition ἐπὶ αὐτήν into our service here. Jesus, according to St. Mark, seems to teach His hearers that the husband in wrongfully divorcing his wife is guilty of the aggravated sin of dragging her into the slough where he is himself already wallowing. On him falls the woe pronounced in another connexion by Jesus (Mat 18:6-7); for he compels his wife to occupy a position which is a living contradiction of the Divine law. A course of action tending to the dissolution of that which in the Divine intention is indissoluble, Jesus places in the category of adulterous acts. He mentions nothing as to His view of the case of the remarriage of a woman justifiably divorced, but to the present writer He appears plainly to assert that the man who marries an innocent divorced woman is guilty of adultery.

In our critical examination of these passages we are confronted with a still greater and no less remarkable variety. St. Matthew differs from the other two Synoptists by giving a place in Jesus’ teaching to an implied ground for legitimate divorce. He alone includes the exceptive clauses παρεκτὀς λόγου πορνεἰας (Mat 5:32) and μἡ ἐπὶ πορνεία (Mat 19:9). It is this variety in the records of Jesus’ words which has introduced so much difficulty, doctrinal and legislative, into the questions of divorce and the remarriage of divorced persons. We are not, of course, without that form of conjectural criticism which would delete these clauses as mere glosses or unsuitable interpolations (see Bacon, The Sermon on the Mount, ad loc.). In the absence, however, of external or textual evidence we are not entitled to invent textual emendations in the interests of a preconceived theory (cf. Wright, Synopsis of the Gospels in Greek, p. 98 f.). It is but fair to add that the Codex Vaticanus (B) and some less important authorities manifest a strong desire to make Mat 19:9 conform literally to Mat 5:32, and thereby create some uncertainty as to the textual purity of these passages. The evidential value, however, for these variations is too slight to be of any avail against the unanimity of all our other witnesses; they are transparent and later attempts at assimilation or harmony. The argumentum e silentio is in this case too strong to admit the validity of conjecture. A forcible statement of the other side of the case may be found in the art. ‘Sermon on the Mount’ (Votaw) in the Extra Vol of Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible p. 27.

At all periods of the history of Christian teaching, differences of opinion have existed within the Church as to the practical application of Jesus’ words concerning adultery, divorce, and remarriage. These differences have been stereotyped in the Eastern and Western branches of the Catholic Church. The former takes the more lenient view, and permits the remarriage of the innocent divorcé (e), while the latter has always maintained the more stringent and (shall we say?) the more strictly literal conclusion from Jesus’ words, that inequality of treatment is not to be tolerated, interpreting the conclusion by refusing the right of remarriage to either during the life of the other.

On the other hand, the general consensus of theological opinion amongst English-speaking divines since the Reformation has leaned towards the view held by the Eastern Church, and the resolutions of the bishops in the Pan-Anglican Conference of 1888 on this subject were but the formal expressions of a traditional mode of interpretation. When we turn from the words of Jesus to see what were the ideas of those who taught in His name during the ages immediately subsequent, we have St. Paul’s teaching on, and references to, the question of divorce. In one place he treats marriage as indissoluble, and he has no hesitation in saying that the woman who marries another man during the lifetime of her husband is guilty of adultery (Rom 7:1-3). On the other hand, we must not forget that the Apostle in this place is dealing with the Jewish law and with Jews who did not admit the absolute indissolubility of the marriage tie. The fact that he has made no reference to this Jewish law of divorce forbids us drawing any certain conclusion as to the length St. Paul was willing to go in stating a universal principle which would guide the legislative activity of the Christian Church. In another place he speaks of separation as the possible outcome of an unhappy or unequal marriage, and gives permission, if not encouragement, to that contingent result (χωριζέσθω). In this he goes farther than Jesus, so far as we have His teaching recorded for us, went. According to Jesus, adultery is the only crime of sufficient enormity to warrant divorce; according to St. Paul, the law of marriage does not govern the deserted wife or husband (οὐ δεδοὑλωται ὁ ἀδελφὸς ἢ ἡ ἀδελφὴ ἐν τοῖς τοιούτοις, 1Co 7:15 [cf. Newman Smyth, Christian. Ethics^{3 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred]} , p. 412f. and note]).

The Shepherd of Hermas (Mand. iv. 1. 6) lays down the rule that adultery demands separation or divorce (ἀπολυσάτω αὑτήν), because by continuing to live with his wife after she has been convicted of guilt, the husband becomes ‘an accomplice in her adultery.’ On the other hand, he is equally insistent that the man thus wronged must not marry another, lest he cut his guilty partner off from the hope of repentance, and lest he involve himself likewise in the sin of adultery (ἑὰν δὲ ἀπολύσας τἡν γυναῖκα ἐτέραν γαμήσῃ, καὶ αὐτὸς μοιχᾶται).

Amongst the number of those who are debarred from inheriting the kingdom of God, St. Paul mentions fornicators and adulterers (πόρνοι καὶ μοιχοί 1Co 6:9; cf. Eph 5:5, 1Ti 1:10, Heb 13:4, Rev 21:8; Rev 22:15).

The universal conclusion is that this sin creates a breach of the marriage relation so grave and far-reaching that it makes divorce the only legitimate sequel—divorce a mensâ et thoro. The question, however, remains whether the Christian Church has the right to go farther and say that, as the result of an adulterous act, the aggrieved party has a just claim to divorce a vinculo; has a right, that is to say, to be placed in a position as if the marriage had never taken place. This will, no doubt, be answered differently by different minds, and the difficulty is not decreased by merely appealing to the authority of Jesus. Different answers are given to the more fundamental questions, Did Jesus intend to occupy the position of legislator when He spoke of adultery and divorce? or was He simply enunciating a general principle, leaving future generations to deal with social conditions as they arose? The present writer has no hesitation in saying that his own opinion leans strongly to the side of those who believe that Jesus affirmed solemnly the indissolubility of the marriage tie, and that He meant His followers to understand that the remarriage of either party during the life of the other constitutes adultery. At the same time he is not unaware of the fact that there is a strong body of sober modern thought which tends towards a relaxation of this view in favour of the innocent (see Gore, The Sermon on the Mount, p. 73).

If Jesus in Mat 5:27-32 is making a categorical statement of universal application, then the opinion, given by the present writer as his own, can scarcely be disputed; but if He is interpreted as dealing with the foundations rather than making structural alterations in the ethical beliefs of His countrymen, we must conclude that He leaves His followers to deal with the question as it arises. In the latter case it is, of course, competent for the Church in each age to treat the question de novo. The conditions of society alter, and what constitutes danger to the social welfare at one time, may have comparatively little peril for the people of another period. At the same time it must not be forgotten that the tendency of human legislation has been and is likely to be, for some time to come at least, towards the loosening of the marriage bond, and the minimizing of the seriousness of that guilt by which men uproot the foundations of their social and domestic life.

Literature.—Newman Smyth’s Christian Ethics^{3 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred]} contains a very fair and cautious discussion of this whole question, and along with that work it will be found useful to study the more abstract volume of Bampton Lectures on the same subject (1895) by T. B. Strong; cf. G. B. Stevens’ The Theology of the NT. Gore’s The Sermon on the Mount may be read along with Bacon’s volume of the same title, and Votaw’s article ‘Sermon on the Mount’ in the Extra Volume of Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible . In the latter work (vols. i. and iii.) are also to be found useful references under artt. ‘Crimes,’ ‘Marriage.’ A very suggestive art., ‘The Teaching of Christ about Divorce,’ by the Rev. the Hon. E. Lyttelton, will be found in the Journal of Theol. Studies for July 1904. Cf. also H. M. Luckock’s History of Marriage (1894), and O. D. Watkins’ Holy Matrimony (1895).

J. R. Willis.

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By: David Werner Amram

Woman's Rights Enforced.

Sexual intercourse of a married woman with any man other than her husband. The crime can be committed only by and with a married woman; for the unlawful intercourse of a married man with an unmarried woman is not technically Adultery in the Jewish law. Under the Biblical law, the detection of actual sexual intercourse was necessary to establish the crime (Lev. xviii. 20 [A. V. 19]; Num. v. 12, 13, 19); but this rule was so far modified by the Talmudic law, that circumstantial evidence was sufficient to justify legal procedure if the wife had been cautioned by her husband against intimate association with the suspected man (Soṭah, i. 2). When the Adultery is committed with a married woman who is within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity or affinity, the crime becomes Incest. Although the common opinion of mankind is more inclined to condone the Adultery of the husband than that of the wife, modern law has ignored the distinction between the two crimes, and technically they are alike. But the ancient Jewish law, as well as other systems of law which grew out of a patriarchal state of society, does not recognize the husband's infidelity to his marriage vows as a crime, and it was not until comparatively recent times that the woman was legally entitled to enforce her husband's faithfulness, and was given the right to demand a bill of divorce for his sexual immorality (Isserles on "Eben ha-'Ezer," § 154, 1). The sin of concubinage is, however, already severely condemned in Leviticus Rabbah, xxv.

Site of the Ancient City of Adullam.(By permission of the Palestine Exploration Fund.)

Although in ancient society and law Adultery was regarded as a private wrong committed against the husband, public law later on exercised control of its investigation and punishment; for organized society was impossible unless it punished this crime, which saps the very root of the social life. "Thou shalt not commit adultery" is not merely a command not to tamper with the domestic affairs of another, but a warning to refrain from unsettling the foundations of society.

Sacredness of Marriage Relation.

The law, therefore, sought to guard the sacredness of the marriage relation by moral injunction and by legal restraints. In patriarchal times the purity of marriage was pictured as jealously guarded (see the cases of Sarah and Rebekah; Gen. xii. 18, 19, xx. 2-7, xxvi. 10, 11). The Biblical and Talmudical ideal of marriage had a strong influence in controlling those who were susceptible to purely moral influence and suasion. "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh" (Gen. ii. 24). The woman is made sacred by the ceremony of ḳiddushin, and is thereby set apart for her husband alone (Ḳid. 2b). Idolatry, murder, andgilluy 'arayot (which comprises both incest and adultery) are three crimes never to be committed under any circumstances, and a man should sacrifice his life rather than commit them (Sanh. 74a). This was the decision of the rabbis at the meeting at Lydda, during the Hadrianic Revolt (see Graetz, "History of the Jews," ii. 422-424.) Thus law and morality went hand in hand to prevent the commission of the crime. For those, however, who were deaf to warnings of law and reason, the punishment of death was ordained. Both the guilty wife and her paramour were put to death (Deut. xxii. 22).

Unlawful intercourse with a woman betrothed to a man was adultery, because the betrothed woman was deemed as inviolable as the married woman. The punishment for this crime was stoning to death at the place of public execution (Deut. xxii. 24). The punishment for Adultery according to the Mishnah (Sanh. xi. 1) was strangulation; the rabbinical theory being that wherever the death penalty was mentioned in the Bible, without any specific statement of the manner of its infliction, strangulation was meant (Sifra, Ḳedoshim, 4, 9).

The priest's daughter who committed Adultery was burned to death, according to the rabbinical interpretation of the text in Lev. xxi. 9 (Sanh. 66b), and her paramour was strangled (Maimonides, "Yad ha-Ḥazaḳah, Issure Biah," iii. 3). When the crime is committed with a bondmaid betrothed to a man, it is not Adultery technically, because the woman is not free, and the death penalty is not inflicted, but as she has a quasi-marital status, she and her paramour are scourged (Lev. xix. 20). Ibn Ezra (ad loc.) takes the view that this case refers to the Hebrew maiden who has been sold by her father and who is intended to be the bride of her master or of his son, but who is not yet betrothed; for the betrothal would have made her free ipso facto.

Talmudic View.

Under the Talmudic law the severity of the Mosaic code was in many instances modified, and the laws relating to Adultery came under the influence of a milder theory of the relation of crime and punishment. Indeed, the rabbis went so far as to declare that a woman could not be convicted of Adultery unless it had been affirmatively shown that she knew the law relating to it—a theory that resulted in the practical impossibility of convicting any adulteress. No harm was done by this new view, because the right of divorce which remained to the husband was sufficient to free him from the woman, who, although guilty of the crime, was not punishable by the law. Upon this mild view followed the entire abolition of the death penalty, in the year 40, before the destruction of the Second Temple (Sanh. 41a), when the Jewish courts, probably under pressure of the Roman authorities, relinquished their right to inflict capital punishment. Thereafter, the adulterer was scourged, and the husband of the adulteress was not allowed to condone her crime (Soṭah, vi. 1), but was compelled to divorce her, and she lost all her property rights under her marriage contract (Maimonides, "Yad ha-Ḥazaḳah, Ishut," xxiv. 6); nor was the adulteress permitted to marry her paramour (Soṭah, v. 1); and if she married him, they were forced to separate.

Exceptions.

The right of the husband to divorce his wife at his pleasure was a sufficient protection for him in case his wife was guilty of the crime of Adultery, even if he had no proof of it, but merely suspicion founded on circumstantial facts. If the wife had committed unlawful intercourse against her will, or if she had mistaken the adulterer for her husband, she was not guilty of Adultery, because she did not act as a free agent. The usual punishments are not inflicted in such cases, and the legal consequences of Adultery do not follow (Ket. 51b). Such crime is no cause for divorce, except if the woman be the wife of a priest. The priest is not allowed to keep her because of the peculiar sanctity of his office, which requires the highest degree of domestic purity (Yeb. 56b).

Guilt Tested by Ordeal.

As "the eye of the adulterer waiteth for twilight, saying, No eye shall see me" (Job, xxiv. 15), Adultery is a crime usually difficult of proof, and the Biblical code contained provision for the case of the woman who was suspected of Adultery by her husband. Moved by the spirit of jealousy, he brought her before the priest in the sanctuary, and she was there obliged to undergo the severe "ordeal of the bitter waters." A full account of the details of this ordeal is given in Num. v. 11-31; these details may also be found amplified in the Mishnah. The suspected woman was taken to the local court by her husband and there his charge was made. The court assigned two doctors of the law to escort the parties to the Great Sanhedrin at Jerusalem. The purpose of the hearing before the Sanhedrin was to evoke a confession. The Sanhedrin appealed to the woman and suggested various causes that might have induced her to go astray, and finally asked her to confess. If she admitted her crime, she was divorced from her husband at once and lost her property rights under her Ketubah. But if she denied it, she was taken to the East Gate of the Temple, in front of the Nicanor Gate, and there was placed in charge of a priest, who performed the ceremony mentioned in the Book of Numbers. He rent her garment so that her breast was exposed, and loosened her hair; she was draped in black; all ornaments were removed from her person, and a rope was tied around her chest. Thus publicly exposed (only her servants being prevented from seeing her), the jealousy-offering was placed in her hands. It was a humble offering of barley meal, without oil or incense upon it, the feed of beasts, typifying the meanness of the crime that she was supposed to have committed. The priest then placed some of the dust of the Tabernacle in an earthen vessel full of water, and charged her with the solemn oath of purgation (Num. v. 19-22). After this the priest wrote the oath on parchment, blotted it out with the water, which he caused her to drink, and the jealousy-offering was then offered upon the altar (Soṭah, i. 4-6; ii. 1-3).

If the woman refused to submit to the ordeal, and there was circumstantial evidence of her criminality, she was obliged to separate from her husband (Soṭah, i. 5). Whatever may have been the actual significance of this ordeal when first established, within Talmudic times it had merely a moral meaning. It was simply a test under which the woman, if guilty, was likely to succumb and confess. R. Akiba says: "Only when the man is himself free from guilt, will the waters be an effective test of his wife's guilt or innocence; but if he has been guilty of illicit intercourse, the waters will have no effect"; and he based his opinion on a text in Hosea, iv. 14 (Sifre, Naso, 21; Soṭah, 47b). In the light of this rabbinical dictum, the saying of Jesus in the case of the woman taken in Adultery acquires a new meaning. To those asking for her punishment, he replied, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her" (John, viii. 7).

Ordeal Annulled.

This rabbinical interpretation of the law relating to the ordeal practically annulled it, and it soon fellinto disuse. During the Roman invasion of Palestine, and the last days of the commonwealth, the Sanhedrin, under the presidency of Johanan ben Zakkai, abolished the ordeal entirely; as the Mishnah states, "when adulterers became numerous, the 'ordeal of the bitter waters' ceased, and it was R. Johanan ben Zakkai who abolished it; as it is written (Hosea, iv. 14), 'I will not punish your daughters, when they commit whoredom, nor your spouses, when they commit adultery; for themselves are separated with whores, and they sacrifice with harlots'" (Soṭah, ix. 9). For it appears that under the Roman régime, immorality spread among the people, the judges became corrupt, the springs of justice were defiled, and general demoralization resulted (Graetz, "History of the Jews," ii. 237, 238). Probably for this very reason Queen Helena of Adiabene, the illustrious and munificent proselyte to Judaism, favored the ordeal; for she presented a golden tablet to the Temple with the chapter from the Law engraved on it, to be used for the rite of the ordeal (Tosef., Yoma, ii. 3; Mishnah Yoma, iii. 10; Gem. ib. 37b). But even if it had not been abolished, the rite would have sunk into abeyance with the fall of the Temple, because, according to the Law, the ceremony could not be performed elsewhere.

The Law in Patriarchal Days.

In the patriarchal days the Adultery of the wife required no proof, for whenever the head of the family suspected her, he could kill her. Thus Judah ordered his daughter-in-law, Tamar, to be burned because of her supposed Adultery (Gen. xxxviii. 24). Her crime consisted in unlawful intercourse with a man other than the brother of her deceased husband. For at first it was the custom, and afterward it became the law, for the widow of a man who had died without leaving issue, to marry his brother, so that the child of this union might be of the blood of the deceased and bear his name (Deut. xxv. 5, 6; see Levirate). In such cases the widow was really considered the betrothed of her brother-in-law, and her intercourse with another than himself was punishable as Adultery. When the punishment of the adulteress and her paramour was taken out of the hands of the husband and assumed by the civil law, this, like every other crime, had to be proved by two or more witnesses, before a conviction and sentence could follow (Deut. xix. 15; Maimonides, "Hilkot Ishut," xxiv. 18).

Under the theory of the Talmudists, which still further mitigated the severity of the law, the woman could not be convicted of Adultery until it was proved that she had been previously cautioned, in the presence of two witnesses, not to have any communication with the suspected man, and that, in spite of such caution, she had met him secretly under circumstances that would make the commission of the crime possible (Mishnah Soṭah, i. 1, 2; Gem. 2b). This caution was given to her because of the general tendency of the rabbinical law toward mercy, based in this case on a technical interpretation of the Biblical text (Num. v. 13). Practically, it worked an acquittal in nearly every case. If, however, the husband was not satisfied with the result, the right of divorce was left open to him, although, when divorced under such circumstances, the wife did not lose her property rights under the ḳetubah. If rumors of the wife's Adultery were circulated during the absence of the husband, the court had the right to summon and caution her with the same effect as though it had been done by her husband (Maimonides, "Hilkot Soṭah," i. 11).

Status of Adulterer.

The paramour was technically the adulterer (noef), and under the Biblical law suffered death together with the adulteress (noefet). His crime was held in the greatest abhorrence, and Raba and Rab voiced the general opinion when they said that nothing would excuse the wilful adulterer, nor would all his virtues save him from Gehenna (Soṭah, 4b). Even a lustful desire was deemed a moral crime, and the echo of "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife" rings throughout the Talmud and rabbinical writings, and is reechoed in the New Testament (Ex. xx. 17; Eben ha-'Ezer, 21; Matt. v. 27, 28). The adulterer's folly is condemned and makes him liable to the jealous wrath of the outraged husband (Prov. vi. 32-34; Job, xxxi. 9, 10). In Talmudic days, long after the abolition of the death penalty, the adulterer was punished by flagellation, and was forbidden to marry the faithless wife after she had been divorced. Even the mere suspicion of the crime was sufficient to prevent their marriage. A case, however, is suggested in the Talmud in which this restriction seems to have been removed. Here the woman having been suspected of Adultery was divorced, and having remarried was again divorced, and then married the man who had originally been suspected of having committed Adultery with her; the marriage was declared lawful, because it seems that the intervening marriage was considered in some degree a refutation of that suspicion, and acted as a limitation upon the original interdict (Yeb. 24b).

The child of an incestuous or adulterous connection was known as a Mamzer. It was not permitted to become a member of the Jewish body politic (Deut. xxiii. 3 [A. V. 2]), and could not intermarry with a Jew or Jewess (Ḳid. iii. 12), although it did not lose its right to inherit from the husband of its mother, who, while not the legitimate father, was for this purpose the putative father (Yeb. ii. 5; Maimonides, "Naḥalut," i. 7).

Bibliography:

J. Selden, Uxor Hebraica, 1646;

J. C. Wagenseil (translation of the Talmudic treatise Soṭah, with elaborate annotations), Altdorf, 1674;

Michaelis, Mosaisches Recht, 1785, v. passim;

Saalschütz, Das Mosaische Recht, 1853, 2d ed., ii. 570-575;

Z. Frankel, Grundlinien des Mosaisch-Talmudischen Eherechts, Breslau, 1860;

M. Duschak, Das Mosaisch-Talmudische Eherecht, Vienna, 1864;

M. Mielziner, Jewish Law of Marriage and Divorce, Cincinnati, 1884;

D. W. Amram, Jewish Law of Divorce, 1896;

Leopold Löw, Gesammelte Schriften, iii. 13 et seq.

ADULTERY.—See Crimes, Marriage.

(Latin: adulterium)

Carnal intercourse of a married person and another who is not the wife or husband. It is a diriment impediment to marriage between two who, during the time of a legitimate marriage, commit the crime pledging themselves to marriage later; or, who commit it during the time of a legitimate marriage and one or the other brings about the death of one of the married parties.

It is the purpose of this article to consider adultery with reference only to morality. The study of it, as more particularly affecting the bond of marriage, will be found under the head of Divorce. The discussion of adultery may be ordered under three general divisions: I. Nature of adultery; II. Its guilt; III. Obligations entailed upon the offenders. I. NATURE OF ADULTERYAdultery is defined as carnal connection between a married person and one unmarried, or between a married person and the spouse of another. It is seen to differ from fornication in that it supposes the marriage of one or both of the agents. Nor is it necessary that this marriage be already consummated; it need only be what theologians call matrimonium ratum. Sexual commerce with one engaged to another does not, it is most generally held, constitute adultery. Again, adultery, as the definition declares, is committed in carnal intercourse. Nevertheless immodest actions indulged in between a married person and another not the lawful spouse, while not of the same degree of guilt, are of the same character of malice as adultery (Sanchez, De Mat., L. IX. Disp. XLVI, n. 17). It must be added, however, that St. Alphonsus Liguori, with most theologians, declares that even between lawful man and wife adultery is committed when their intercourse takes the form of sodomy (S. Liguori L. III, n. 446).Among savages generally adultery is rigorously condemned and punished. But it is condemned and punished only as a violation of the husband’s rights. Among such peoples the wife is commonly reckoned as the property of her spouse, and adultery, therefore, is identified with theft. But it is theft of an aggravated kind, as the property which it would spoliate is more highly appraised than other chattels. So it is that in some parts of Africa the seducer is punished with the loss of one or both hands, as one who has perpetrated a robbery upon the husband (Reade, Savage Africa, p. 61). But it is not the seducer alone that suffers. Dire penalties are visited upon the offending wife by her wronged spouse in many instances she is made to endure such a bodily mutilation as will, in the mind of the aggrieved husband, prevent her being thereafter a temptation to other men (Schoolcraft, Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, I, 236; V, 683, 684, 686; also H.H. Bancroft, The Native Races of the Pacific States of North America, I, 514). If, however, the wronged husband could visit swift and terrible retribution upon the adulterous wife, the latter was allowed no cause against the unfaithful husband; and this discrimination found in the practices of savage peoples is moreover set forth in nearly all ancient codes of law. The Laws of Manu are Striking on this point. In ancient India, "though destitute of virtue or seeking pleasure elsewhere, or devoid of good qualities, yet a husband must be constantly worshipped as a god by a faithful wife"; on the other, hand, "if a wife, proud of the greatness of her relatives or [her own] excellence, violates the duty which she owes to her lord, the king shall cause her to be devoured by dogs in a place frequented by many" (Laws of Manu, V, 154; VIII, 371).In the Graeco-Roman world we find stringent laws against adultery, yet almost throughout they discriminate against the wife. The ancient idea that the wife was the property of the husband is still operative. The lending of wives practiced among some savages was, as Plutarch tells us, encouraged also by Lycurgus, though, be it observed, from a motive other than that which actuated the savages (Plutarch, Lycurgus, XXIX). The recognized license of the Greek husband may be seen in the following passage of the Oration against Neaera, the author of which is uncertain, though it has been attributed to Demosthenes: "We keep mistresses for our pleasures, concubines for constant attendance, and wives to bear us legitimate children, and to be our faithful housekeepers. Yet, because of the wrong done to the husband only, the Athenian lawgiver Solon, allowed any man to kill an, adulterer whom he had taken in the act" (Plutarch, Solon).In the early Roman Law the jus tori belonged to the husband. There was, therefore, no such thing as the crime of adultery on the part of a husband towards his wife. Moreover, this crime was not committed unless one of the parties was a married woman (Dig., XLVIII, ad leg. Jul.). That the Roman husband often took advantage of his legal immunity is well known. Thus we are told by the historian Spartianus that Verus, the colleague of Marcus Aurelius, did not hesitate to declare to his reproaching wife: "Uxor enim dignitatis nomen est, non voluptatis." (Verus, V). Later on in Roman history, as the late William E.H. Lecky has shown the idea that the husband owed a fidelity like that demanded of the wife must have gained ground at least in theory. This Lecky gathers from the legal maxim of Ulpian: "It seems most unfair for a man to require from a wife the chastity he does not himself practice" (Cod. Just., Digest, XLVIII, 5-13; Lecky, History of European Morals, II, 313).In the Mosaic Law, as in the old Roman Law, adultery meant only the carnal intercourse of a wife with a man who was not her lawful husband. The intercourse of a married man with a single woman was not accounted adultery, but fornication. The penal statute on the subject, in Lev., xx, 10, makes this clear: "If any man commit adultery with the wife of another and defile his neighbor’s wife let them be put to death both the adulterer and the adulteress." (See also Deuteronomy 22:22) This was quite in keeping with the prevailing practice of polygamy among the Israelites. In the Christian law this discrimination against the wife is emphatically repudiated. In the law of Jesus Christ regarding marriage the unfaithful husband loses his ancient immunity (Matthew 19:3-13). The obligation of mutual fidelity, incumbent upon husband as well as wife, is moreover implied in the notion of the Christian sacrament, in which is symbolized the ineffable and lasting union of the Heavenly Bridegroom and His unspotted Bride, the Church, St. Paul insists with emphasis upon the duty of equal mutual fidelity in both the marital partners (1 Corinthians 7:4); and several of the Fathers of the Church, as Tertullian (De Monogamia, cix), Lactantius (Divin. Instit., LVI, c. xxiii), St. Gregory Nazianzen (Oratio, xxxi), and St. Augustine (De Bono Conjugati, n. 4), have given clear expression to the same idea. But the notion that obligations of fidelity rested upon the husband the same as upon the wife is one that has not always found practical exemplification in the laws of Christian states. Despite the protests of Mr. Gladstone, the English Parliament passed, in 1857, a law by which a husband may obtain absolute divorce on account of simple adultery in his wife, while the latter can be freed from her adulterous husband only when his infidelity has been attended with such cruelty "as would have entitled her to a divorce a mensâ et toro." The same discrimination against the wife is found in some of our early New England colonies. Thus, in Massachusetts the adultery of the husband, unlike that of the wife, was not sufficient ground for divorce. And the same most likely was the case in Plymouth Plantation (Howard, A History of Matrimonial Institutions, II, 331-351). At present, in our States there is not this discrimination, but divorce, when granted on the ground of adultery, is obtainable by the wife just as by the husband. II. GUILT OF ADULTERYWe have referred to the severe punishment meted out to the adulterous woman and her seducer among savages. It is clear, however, that the severity of these penalties did not find their sanction in anything like an adequate idea of the guilt of this crime. In contrast with such rigour is the lofty benignity of Jesus Christ towards the one guilty of adultery (John 8:3, 4), a contrast as marked as that which exists between the Christian doctrine regarding the malice of this sin and the idea of its guilt which prevailed before the Christian era. In the early discipline of the Church we see reflected a sense of the enormity of adultery, though it must be admitted that the severity of this legislation, such as that, for instance, which we find in canons 8 and 47 of the Council of Elvira (c. 300), must be largely accounted for by the general harshness of the times. Considering now the act in itself, adultery, forbidden by the sixth commandment, has in it a twofold malice, In common with fornication it violates chastity, and it is, besides, a sin against justice. Drawing a distinction between these two elements of malice, certain casuists, early in the seventeenth century, declared that intercourse with a married woman, when her husband gave his consent, constituted not the sin of adultery, but of fornication. It would, therefore, they contended, be sufficient for the penitent, having committed this act, to accuse himself of the latter sin only in confession. At the instance of the Archbishop of Mechlin, the Academy of Louvain, in the year 1653, censured as false and erroneous the proposition: "Copula cum conjugata consentiente marito non est adulterium, adeoque sufficit in confessione dicere se esse fornicatum." The same proposition was condemned by Innocent XI, 2 March, 1679 (Denzinger, Enchir., p. 222, 5th ed.). The falsity of this doctrine appears from the very etymology of the word adultery, for the term signifies the going into the bed of another (St. Thom., II-II:154:8). And the consent of the husband is unavailing to strip the act by which another has intercourse with his wife of this essential characterization. Again, the right of the husband over his wife is qualified by the good of human generation. This good regards not only the birth, but the nourishment and education, of offspring, and its postulates cannot in any way be affected by the consent of parents. Such consent, therefore, as subversive of the good of human generation, becomes juridically void. It cannot, therefore, be adduced as a ground for the doctrine set forth in the condemned proposition above mentioned. For the legal axiom that an injury is not done to one who knows and wills it (scienti et volenti non fit injuria) finds no place when the consent is thus vitiated.But it may be contended that the consent of the husband lessens the enormity of adultery to the extent that whereas, ordinarily, there is a double malice -- that against the good of human generation and that against the private rights of the husband with the consent of the latter there is only the first-named malice; hence, one having had carnal intercourse with another’s wife, her husband consenting, should in confession declare the circumstance of this permission that he may not accuse himself of that of which he is not guilty: In answer to this, it must be said that the injury offered the husband in adultery is done him not as a private individual but as a member of a marital society, upon whom it is incumbent to consult the good of the prospective child. As such, his consent does not avail to take away the malice of which it is question. Whence it follows that there is no obligation to reveal the fact of his consent in the case we have supposed (Viva, Damnatae Theses, 318). And here it may be observed that the consenting husband may be understood to have renounced his right to any restitution.The question has been discussed, whether in adultery committed with a Christian, as distinct from that committed with a Pagan, there would be special malice against the sacrament constituting a sin against religion. Though some theologians have held that such would be the case, it should be said, with Viva, that the fact that the sinful person was a Christian would create an aggravating circumstance only, which would not call for specification in confession.It need hardly be said that when the parties to adultery are both married the sin is more grievous than when one of them is single. Nor is it sufficient for a married person whose guilty partner in this act was also married to declare in confession the fact simply of having committed adultery. The circumstance that both parties to the sin were married is one that must be made known. Again the adulterer in his confession must specify whether, as married, he violated his own marriage pledge or; as single he brought about the violation of the marriage pledge of another. Finally, it is to be observed that in case only one of the parties to adultery is married, a more heinous sin is committed when the married person is the woman than when she is the unmarried agent. For in the former instance the due process of generation is not infrequently interfered with, to the injury of the lawful husband; moreover, uncertainty of parentage may result, and even a false heir may be imposed upon the family. Such a distinction as is here remarked, therefore, calls for specification in the confessional. III. OBLIGATIONS ENTAILED UPON THE OFFENDERSAs we have seen, the sin of adultery implies an act of injustice. This is committed against the lawful spouse of the adulterer or adulteress. By the adultery of a wife, besides the injury done the husband by her infidelity, a spurious child may be born which he may think himself bound to sustain, and which may perhaps become his heir. For the injury suffered in the unfaithfulness of his wife restitution must be made to the husband, should he become apprised of the crime. Nor is the obligation of this restitution ordinarily discharged by an award of money. A more commensurate reparation, when possible, is to be offered. Whenever it is certain that the offspring is illegitimate, and when the adulterer has employed violence to make the woman sin, he is bound to refund the expenses incurred by the putative father in the support of the spurious child, and to make restitution for any inheritance which this child may receive. In case he did not employ violence, there being on his part but a simple concurrence, then, according to the more probable opinion of theologians, the adulterer and adulteress are equally bound to the restitution just described. Even when one has moved the other to sin both are bound to restitution, though most theologians say that the obligation is more immediately pressing upon the one who induced the other to sin. When it is not sure that the offspring is illegitimate the common opinion of theologians is that the sinful parties are not bound to restitution. As for the adulterous mother, in case she cannot secretly undo the injustice resulting from the presence of her illegitimate child, she is not obliged to reveal her sin either to her husband or to her spurious offspring, unless the evil which the good name of the mother might sustain is less than that which would inevitably come from her failure to make such a revelation. Again, in case there would not be the danger of infamy, she would be held to reveal her sin when she could reasonably hope that such a manifestation would be productive of good results. This kind of issue, however, would be necessarily rare.----------------------------------- The following works may be particularly consulted: SANCHEZ, De Matrimonio; VIVA, Damnatae Theses; CRAISSON, De Rebus Venereis; LETOURNEAU, The Evolution of Marriage; WESTER-MARCK, The History of Human Marriage. JOHN WEBSTER MELODY The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume ICopyright © 1907 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, March 1, 1907. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York

a-dul´tẽr-ı̄: In Scripture designates sexual intercourse of a man, whether married or unmarried, with a married woman.

1. Its Punishment

It is categorically prohibited in the Decalogue (seventh commandment, Exo 20:14; Deu 5:18): “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” In more specific language we read: “And thou shalt not he carnally with thy neighbor’s wife, to defile thyself with her” (Lev 18:20). The penalty is death for both guilty parties: “And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbor’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death” (Lev 20:10). The manner of death is not particularized; according to the rabbis (Siphra’ at the place; Ṣanhedhrı̄n 52b) it is strangulation. It would seem that in the days of Jesus the manner of death was interpreted to mean stoning (“Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such,” Joh 8:5, said of the woman taken in adultery). Nevertheless, it may be said that in the case in question the woman may have been a virgin betrothed unto a husband, the law (in Deu 22:23) providing that such a person together with her paramour be stoned to death (contrast Deu 22:22, where a woman married to a husband is spoken of and the manner of death is again left general). Eze 16:40 (compare Eze 23:47) equally mentions stoning as the penalty of the adulteress; but it couples to her sin also that of shedding blood; hence, the rabbinic interpretation is not necessarily disputed by the prophet. Of course it may also be assumed that a difference of custom may have obtained at different times and that the progress was in the line of leniency, strangulation being regarded as a more humane form of execution than stoning.

2. Trial by Ordeal

The guilty persons become amenable to the death penalty only when taken “in the very act” (Joh 8:4). The difficulty of obtaining direct legal evidence is adverted to by the rabbis (see Makkōth 7a). In the case of a mere suspicion on the part of the husband, not substantiated by legal evidence, the woman is compelled by the law (Nu 5:11-30) to submit to an ordeal, or God’s judgment, which consists in her drinking the water of bitterness, that is, water from the holy basin mingled with dust from the floor of the sanctuary and with the washed-off ink of a writing containing the oath which the woman has been made to repeat. The water is named bitter with reference to its effects in the case of the woman’s guilt; on the other hand, when no ill effects follow, the woman is proved innocent and the husband’s jealousy unsubstantiated. According to the Mishna (Ṣōṭāh 9) this ordeal of the woman suspected of adultery was abolished by Johanan ben Zaccai (after 70 ad), on the ground that the men of his generation were not above the suspicion of impurity. See article BITTER; BITTERNESS.

3. A Heinous Crime

Adultery was regarded as a heinous crime (Job 31:11). The prophets and teachers in Israel repeatedly upbraid the men and women of their generations for their looseness in morals which did not shrink from adulterous connections. Naturally where luxurious habits of life were indulged in, particularly in the large cities, a tone of levity set in: in the dark of the evening, men, with their features masked, waited at their neighbors’ doors (Job 24:15; Job 31:9; compare Prov 7), and women forgetful of their God’s covenant broke faith with the husbands of their youth (Pro 2:17). The prophet Nathan confronted David after his sin with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, with his stern rebuke (“Thou art the man,” 2Sa 12:7); the penitential psalm (Ps 51) - “Miserere” - was sung by the royal bard as a prayer for divine pardon. Promiscuous intercourse with their neighbors’ wives is laid by Jeremiah at the door of the false prophets of his day (Jer 23:10, Jer 23:14; Jer 29:23).

4. Penal and Moral Distinctions

While penal law takes only cognizance of adulterous relations, it is needless to say that the moral law discountenances all manner of illicit intercourse and all manner of unchastity in man and woman. While the phrases “harlotry,” “commit harlotry,” in Scripture denote the breach of wedlock (on the part of a woman), in the rabbinical writings a clear distinction is made on the legal side between adultery and fornication. The latter is condemned morally in no uncertain terms; the seventh commandment is made to include all manner of fornication. The eye and the heart are the two intermediaries of sin (Palestinian Talmud, B^erākhōth 6b). A sinful thought is as wicked as a sinful act (Niddāh 13b and elsewhere). Job makes a covenant with his eyes lest he look upon a virgin (Job 31:1). And so Jesus who came “not to destroy, but to fulfill” (Mat 5:17), in full agreement with the ethical and religious teaching of Judaism, makes the intent of the seventh commandment explicit when he declares that “every one that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already In his heart” (Mat 5:28). And in the spirit of Hosea (Hos 4:15) and Johanan ben Zaccai (see above) Jesus has but scorn for those that are ready judicially to condemn though they be themselves not free from sin! “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her” (Joh 8:7). Whereas society is in need of the death penalty to secure the inviolability of the home life, Jesus bids the erring woman go her way and sin no more. How readily His word might be taken by the unspiritual to imply the condoning of woman’s peccability is evidenced by the fact that the whole section (Jn 7:53 through 8:11) is omitted by “most ancient authorities” (see Augustine’s remark).

5. A Ground of Divorce

Adultery as a ground of divorce. - The meaning of the expression “some unseemly thing” (Deu 24:1) being unclear, there was great variety of opinion among the rabbis as to the grounds upon which a husband may divorce his wife. While the school of Hillel legally at least allowed any trivial reason as a ground for divorce, the stricter interpretation which limited it to adultery alone obtained in the school of Shammai. Jesus coincided with the stricter view (see Mat 5:32; Mat 19:9, and commentaries). From a moral point of view, divorce was discountenanced by the rabbis likewise, save of course for that one ground which indeed makes the continued relations between husband and wife a moral impossibility. See also CRIMES; DIVORCE.

See Marriage.

Jas 4:4 (b) This word in this passage carries a spiritual significance. As those who are married may turn against each other secretly to find another companion, so one who is married to CHRIST and takes the place of being a Christian may turn against the Saviour and become a lover of the world and the things of Satan.

This is called spiritual adultery. This person professes to be a Christian, takes the place of belonging to CHRIST, but finds his real enjoyment, his love and his pleasure in the things that Satan offers.

The teaching of the Bible is that sexual relations are lawful only between husband and wife. A sexual relation between two people who are not married is usually called fornication; a sexual relation between a married person and someone other than that person’s marriage partner is usually called adultery (Exo 20:14; Rom 12:9; Rom 12:20; Gal 5:19; 1Th 4:3-4; see also FORNICATION).

Old Testament regulations

According to the law of Moses, the punishment for adultery was death by stoning (Lev 20:10; Joh 8:3-5). Where there was a suspicion of adultery but no clear evidence, Israelite law set out a special procedure by which a priest could determine the case (Num 5:11-31).

The engaged as well as the married were considered adulterers if they had sexual relations with third parties. Again the penalty was death. The one exception was the case of a woman who had been raped (Deu 22:22-27).

Adultery was a sin against one’s own marriage partner (Mal 2:11; Mal 2:14; cf. Hos 2:2), as well as against the marriage partner of the new lover (Exo 20:14; Exo 20:17; 2Sa 12:9; Pro 6:32-35). Unfaithfulness was at the centre of all adultery. The Old Testament prophets repeatedly spoke of Israel’s unfaithfulness to God as spiritual adultery, or spiritual prostitution (Jer 5:7; Jer 23:10; Eze 16:30-38; Eze 23:4-5; Eze 23:11; Hos 9:1; see PROSTITUTION).

New Testament teachings

Like the Old Testament, the New Testament looks upon marriage as a permanent union. Therefore, the person who divorced and remarried was considered guilty of adultery (Mar 10:2-12; Luk 16:18; Rom 7:2-4). The exception that Jesus allowed concerned the case where persistent adulterous behaviour by one partner had already virtually destroyed the marriage (Mat 5:32; Mat 19:7-9; see also DIVORCE). Jesus said that even the desire to have unlawful sexual relations was a form of adultery. Therefore, the best way to avoid adulterous acts was to avoid adulterous thoughts (Mat 5:27-30; Mat 15:19; cf. Exo 20:17; Jas 1:14-15).

Paul pointed out that Christians in particular should avoid all immoral sexual relations, since their bodies are indwelt by the Holy Spirit and they themselves belong to Christ. For the Christian, there is a sense in which sexual sin is spiritual prostitution (1Co 6:13-20).

Although the New Testament announces God’s judgment on those who are immoral and adulterous (Heb 13:4; 2Pe 2:14), it also shows that God is ready to forgive those who, in sorrow for their sin, turn to him for mercy (1Co 6:9-11). Jesus rebuked the self-righteous who condemned adulterers but who could not see their own sin. At the same time he gave sympathetic support to those who acknowledged their sin and repented of it (Mat 9:11-13; Luk 18:9-14; Joh 8:3-11; cf. Rom 2:22).

Christians may rightly condemn adultery, but, remembering their own weaknesses, they should also forgive those who repent of their adultery. More than that, they should give them understanding and support as they try to re-establish their lives (2Co 2:7; Gal 6:1-2; Eph 1:7; Eph 4:32).

Breaking a marriage promise by

committing sexual sin.