In a recent interview, Old Testament and Semitics professor Dominick Hernandez points out that in the law of Moses, there is an equal penalty for unfaithfulness for men and women caught in the act (i.e. Leviticus 20:10).
Unlike men, if not caught in the act, women may still show signs of their unfaithfulness later if they become pregnant. For this reason, there is a logic to having a separate test for the woman’s unique circumstances. To many modern readers, that test, recorded in unusually extensive detail in Numbers 5:12-31, is one of the most bizarre and disturbing passages in the Bible:
‘If any man’s wife goes astray and behaves unfaithfully toward him, and a man goes to bed with her for sexual relations without her husband knowing it, and it is undetected that she has defiled herself since there was no witness against her, nor was she caught in the act— and if jealous feelings come over him and he becomes suspicious of his wife when she is defiled, or if jealous feelings come over him and he becomes suspicious of his wife, when she is not defiled— then the man must bring his wife to the priest, and he must bring the offering required for her, one-tenth of an ephah of barley meal; he must not pour olive oil on it or put frankincense on it because it is a grain offering of suspicion, a grain offering for remembering, for bringing iniquity to remembrance.
“‘Then the priest will bring her near and have her stand before the Lord. The priest will then take holy water in a pottery jar, and take some of the dust that is on the floor of the tabernacle, and put it into the water. Then the priest will have the woman stand before the Lord, and he will uncover the woman’s head and put the grain offering for remembering in her hands, which is the grain offering of suspicion. The priest will hold in his hand the bitter water that brings a curse. Then the priest will put the woman under oath and say to her, “If no other man has gone to bed with you, and if you have not gone astray and become defiled while under your husband’s authority, may you be free from this bitter water that brings a curse. But if you have gone astray while under your husband’s authority, and if you have defiled yourself and some man other than your husband has had sexual relations with you—” then the priest will put the woman under the oath of the curse and will say to her) “the Lord make you an attested curse among your people if the Lord makes your thigh fall away and your abdomen swell, and this water that causes the curse will go into your stomach and make your abdomen swell and your thigh rot.” Then the woman must say, “Amen, amen.”
“‘Then the priest will write these curses on a scroll and then scrape them off into the bitter water. He will make the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and the water that brings a curse will enter her to produce bitterness. The priest will take the grain offering of suspicion from the woman’s hand, wave the grain offering before the Lord, and bring it to the altar. Then the priest will take a handful of the grain offering as its memorial portion, burn it on the altar, and afterward make the woman drink the water. When he has made her drink the water, then if she has defiled herself and behaved unfaithfully toward her husband, the water that brings a curse will enter her to produce bitterness—her abdomen will swell, her thigh will fall away, and the woman will become a curse among her people. But if the woman has not defiled herself, and is clean, then she will be free of ill effects and will be able to bear children.
“‘This is the law for cases of jealousy, when a wife, while under her husband’s authority, goes astray and defiles herself, or when jealous feelings come over a man and he becomes suspicious of his wife; then he must have the woman stand before the Lord, and the priest will carry out all this law upon her. Then the man will be free from iniquity, but that woman will bear the consequences of her iniquity.’” (NET)
The test answers a terrible question – “How do we resolve the problem of a jealous husband while preserving family and fertility in Israel?” It must address the psychology of the enraged, shamed, and heartbroken, while protecting the innocent and preventing intra-family and tribal rifts, even blood feuds.
While deployed to Iraq and Kuwait, I lived and worked in large tents in the desert. Their wood floors needed to be swept constantly to remove the accumulated sand that wind infiltrated through every slit. For a people wandering in the Sinai desert, the ‘dirt’ on the floor of the Tabernacle was likely desert sand. Drinking water with a small amount of dirt, animal skin, and ink is not, by itself, harmful (especially for people living in tents in a desert, where small quantities of sand would unavoidably be part of everyone’s diet all the time). For the judgment of the guilty, God would have to supernaturally intervene to bring about destructive punishment. The default outcome is merely drinking some gritty, bad tasting water.
In some ways, this trial resembles a modern polygraph (or ‘lie detector test’) in which an interviewer imposes a scenario designed to convince the interviewee that any false claims will certainly be identified. A skilled interviewer, using the psychological pressure generated in the trial, may be able to uncover information that would otherwise have remained hidden. It also serves to assure (however reliably) the parties involved of some resolution to an otherwise intractable question.
Given that a person’s suspicion cannot always be alleviated by another’s assertions, a trial administered by an authority figure provides a (more) reliable resolution.
Why is this bizarre ritual included in Numbers?
When we looked at Leviticus, we considered Mary Douglas’ proposal that its laws are organized within a narrative structure documenting the movement from Moses’ inability to enter the Tabernacle at the end of Exodus through incidents that took place in the vicinity of the Tabernacle’s entrance and the entrance to the Most Holy Place, so the reader and the people and priests in the story have the legal knowledge to move in to safely perform their respective roles for relationship with God. The arrangement of the laws is purposeful and related to the narrative that surrounds them.
From Abraham until the wilderness wandering, God has been telling the Israelites they are his covenant people, his treasured possession, a family set aside for his purpose and for relationship with him, yet the legal instructions for this bizarre trial come at the beginning of a book that documents instances of Israelite unfaithfulness until God sentences a generation of them to exile and death in the wilderness because of their persistent, murderous rebellion (Numbers 14). Numbers 5’s strange instructions in response to a jealous husband provide foreshadowing and legal logic for jealous God’s response to his unfaithful covenant people.
There is not much shared vocabulary between Numbers 5 and 14. The connection is neither firm nor explicit, yet like adultery, the people’s rebellion in Numbers 14 is a profound betrayal. They so thoroughly reject God’s purpose that they desire to return to slavery rather than enter the land God has promised them. They intend to kill the leaders God has appointed over them. God responds as he does in judgments throughout the Torah, by assessing death to the leaders of the rebellion and exile in the wilderness for the remaining people.