Surprise! Taking a break from the Attributes of God for a different subject.

I’m currently taking a course through Lifeway Women’s Academy called “Old Testament Survey“. The next lesson I’ll be doing is on The Law. Dr. Katie McCoy will be teaching it. She has a PhD in Old Testament law, with a particular view to women’s issues. On my way home from Rosedale I listened to a Training the Church podcast with Kyle Worley, JT English and Jen Wilkin….with Katie McCoy as guest! Jen asked her to explain one of the difficult laws for women in the OT, and Katie chose to talk about the test for adultery in Numbers 5: 11-31.

I was way too excited to hear her explanation!

The passage in Numbers is quite lengthy, so it would be a good idea to read the passage before you carry on. (See below)

The law was in place for a husband who suspected his wife of adultery or indiscretions, of unfaithfulness. If he was suspicions or there were rumors.

First thing to remember is that God’s laws are good, and reflect His character. They were given for Israel to be set apart from the other nations. To reflect God’s holiness. Keep this in mind as you read.

The hard thing with this law is that there is no reversal. And there’s no parallel law for wives who might suspect their husbands of infidelity.

Another thing that helps us to understand this law, along with many others is that they could be mirroring a law that was in place in another culture/nation, such as Assyria or Samaria. God put laws in place to tell His people that when they’re in this or that particular situation, this is what you are going to do….to be holy and different. God wanted His people to stand out from the other nations in every respect. This God – our God! – is One who is concerned with justice and righteousness. He shows the world that this is what a just society looks like.

So, if John suspects that his wife Mary has been unfaithful, for whatever reason, he is to bring her to the priest. (imagine the shame, the fear, the public humiliation she would be experiencing. Mary loves her husband, but she is likely angry and hurt!) But, not just the priest. She comes to stand directly before Yahweh. In any other culture, there would be little to no opportunity for the wife to defend herself. She could be told to throw herself into the river. If she survived, she’d be innocent, if she died, she was guilty. But Yahweh will adjudicate the case for Mary! The LORD will render the verdict. Not nature, not chance.

This should also be understood to be protective for Mary. There is a limitation on the husband, protecting her from domestic abuse. As the Zondervan NIV commentary states, “Were there not such a provision in a male dominated culture, an angry, suspicious husband might strike out against his wife without any sure reason, harm her physically and mentally, and even take her life. But God reaches out through Moses and has a means of escape for a woman under suspicion of unfaithfulness. The trial she is taken to is not a kangaroo court; it is in the precincts of the tabernacle, under the jurisdiction of the priests, in concert with a solemn sacrifice – she places herself under the hand of the Lord.”. What an expression of God’s mercy to women who were so often abused by prideful men!

The priest would have a vessel with “holy water” mixed with bitter herbs. The herbs represented the bitterness she would receive if she was guilty. Then he’d take dust from the floor of the Tabernacle and add some to the solution. Why dust from the Tabernacle floor?? The dust is “holy”, and in all of the Old Testament, if something holy came into contact with something unclean or morally impure, it would be fatal. (I immediately think of Uzziah and his attempts to protect the ark of the covenant from falling by reaching out to stabilize it. He died immediately.). Thus, the dust emphasizes the holiness of the matter.

The words of the cursing are spoken, and agreed to by Mary. Then the priest writes down on a scroll the curse she will incur if guilty. Basically, she will be unable to bear children. He takes it and scrapes off scrapings into the solution. What would be the significance of that, you ask? The Name Yahweh is written on the scroll! Scraping off bits was mistreating God’s name, it was disrespectful! But Yahweh is going to be the judge and jury….divinely able to protect a vulnerable woman. The solution Mary will drink was like taking in the name of the LORD. ****** I did some of my own research on this, see below. ******

She drinks the solution, and only Yahweh will provide the verdict. She is not tried by a mob or a jury of her peers….she is directly before the LORD. He makes sure her reputation is restored if she’s innocent. With an omniscient God at the helm, no one innocent would ever be found guilty.

We might find it hard to understand the fact that there is no parallel law for wives to have their husbands “tried”. But from the perspective of an ancient near east women, her safety, protection, provision, financial and economic security was her husband/marriage. She’d be at risk of losing all that on the basis of a suspicion or rumour! The Lord, who has special compassion on the orphans and widows, who demands justice and righteousness because of his holiness, personally inserts Himself into the life of a vulnerable woman. Isn’t that amazing?

****** the sources I read from included the Zondervan NIV Commentary, as well as excerpts from Barnes’ Notes on the Bible, Matthew Poole’s Commentary, Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible, and the Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, from the Bible Hub online.

The ESV has in verse 23: ” Then the priest shall write these curses in a book and wash them off into the water of bitterness.” Other versions use the words “blot them out with, or wash them into”. There are varying thoughts of what is meant by book….was it a scroll? Parchment? Clay tablet? Wooden tablet? Each of these might mean something different in terms of washing the words off into the water. Scrapings makes sense off a wooden tablet perhaps. Or a clay tablet. Some scholars believe it was a particular type of ink that would wash right off. At any rate, all agree that the purpose of this ritual, was to symbolically transfer the curses to the water itself. When the woman drank the concoction of water, bitter herbs and tabernacle floor dust, with the “washing off of the words”, she would be consuming the curses to obtain the full force of the curse. It was meant to set forth the truth…..if guilty, she would feel the effects of the curse, if innocent she wouldn’t be affected. None of the sources mentioned anything about the name of Yahweh being imparted to the water. I would be interested to find out how Dr. McCoy got to her conclusion. *****

Numbers 5: 11-31

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘If a man’s wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him so that another man has sexual relations with her, and this is hidden from her husband and her impurity is undetected (since there is no witness against her and she has not been caught in the act), and if feelings of jealousy come over her husband and he suspects his wife and she is impure—or if he is jealous and suspects her even though she is not impure— then he is to take his wife to the priest.

He must also take an offering of a tenth of an ephah of barley flour on her behalf. He must not pour olive oil on it or put incense on it, because it is a grain offering for jealousy, a reminder-offering to draw attention to wrongdoing. “ 

‘The priest shall bring her and have her stand before the Lord. Then he shall take some holy water in a clay jar and put some dust from the tabernacle floor into the water. After the priest has had the woman stand before the Lord, he shall loosen her hair and place in her hands the reminder-offering, the grain offering for jealousy, while he himself holds the bitter water that brings a curse.

Then the priest shall put the woman under oath and say to her, “If no other man has had sexual relations with you and you have not gone astray and become impure while married to your husband, may this bitter water that brings a curse not harm you. But if you have gone astray while married to your husband and you have made yourself impure by having sexual relations with a man other than your husband”— here the priest is to put the woman under this curse—“may the Lord cause you to become a curse among your people when he makes your womb miscarry and your abdomen swell. May this water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen swells or your womb miscarries.” “ ‘Then the woman is to say, “Amen. So be it.” “

 ‘The priest is to write these curses on a scroll and then wash them off into the bitter water. He shall make the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and this water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering will enter her. The priest is to take from her hands the grain offering for jealousy, wave it before the Lord and bring it to the altar. The priest is then to take a handful of the grain offering as a memorial offering and burn it on the altar; after that, he is to have the woman drink the water. If she has made herself impure and been unfaithful to her husband, this will be the result: When she is made to drink the water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering, it will enter her, her abdomen will swell and her womb will miscarry, and she will become a curse.

If, however, the woman has not made herself impure, but is clean, she will be cleared of guilt and will be able to have children. “ ‘This, then, is the law of jealousy when a woman goes astray and makes herself impure while married to her husband, or when feelings of jealousy come over a man because he suspects his wife. The priest is to have her stand before the Lord and is to apply this entire law to her. The husband will be innocent of any wrongdoing, but the woman will bear the consequences of her sin.’ ”
Numbers 5:11‭-‬31 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/num.5.11-31.NIV