(Book of Numbers 5:11 - 5:31)
Jehovah told Moses to give the following instructions to the Israelites: "Suppose a wife strays and is unfaithful to her husband by having sexual intercourse with another man, even though her husband is unaware of it and the sinful act remains undetected. (There were no witnesses to her adultery and she was not caught in the act.) Nevertheless, the husband becomes jealous and entertains suspicions concerning his wife's fidelity. To determine whether or not his wife is guilty of adultery, the husband should take his wife to see a priest. He should also bring a tenth of an ephah of barley flour. The flour should not be mixed with any oil or incense, for this is to be a grain offering of jealousy, specifically, an offering of remembrance intended to summon up the memory of wrongdoing.
"The priest should bring the offering into the Tabernacle, to the Sacrificial Altar. He should pour some holy water into an earthen cup and mix with it some dust from the Tabernacle floor. The priest should then bring the wife to the altar, uncover her head, and place her hands in the remembrance offering, the grain offering of jealousy, while he holds the cup of bitter water that brings a curse upon the guilty. The priest shall make her take an oath and say to her, 'If you have had sexual relations with no other man, if you have not been guilty of infidelity while married to your husband, then may this bitter water that brings a curse be harmless to you. But, if you have strayed and defiled yourself by having sexual relations with another man,' warns the priest, who must now make the woman take the oath and subject her to the curse, 'then let everyone know that the curse of Jehovah is upon you: you will become infertile, your womb will miscarry whenever you become pregnant. May this bitter water enter your body and cause a miscarriage whenever you become pregnant!’ The woman must then affirm, 'So let it be, so let it be!'
"The priest will write this curse on a papyrus scroll and then wash off the writing in the bitter water. He will make the woman drink the bitter water that brings the curse, and when it enters her body, it will produce bitterness -- if she is guilty. The priest will take the grain offering from the woman, elevate and wave it, and then present it upon the altar. A handful of grain he will burn upon the altar as a token portion. The woman will then drink from the bitter water. If she has defiled herself by being unfaithful to her husband, then the bitter water that brings the curse will cause her great pain, her womb will miscarry if she becomes pregnant, and her name will become an anathema among her people. But if she has not defiled herself and is innocent, then she will be unharmed and able still to have children.
"This is the proper procedure when dealing with marital jealousy, when a woman strays and defiles herself while she is her husband's legal wife, or when a husband becomes jealous and suspects his wife of adultery. In such cases, he should present his wife at Jehovah's altar where the priest will apply the whole of this law to her. The man will be judged innocent of any wrongdoing, but the woman must bear the consequences of her wrongdoing.
Notes
1. A tenth of an ephah would be about two quarts.
2. This procedure, which, to the modern, must border on risibility, is straight out of the traditional witch-doctor's manual. Primitive societies round the world would have had customs similar to this. The determination of guilt, not through evidence and testimony, but through religious ritual, through variations of trial by ordeal, is reasonably justified by several postulates. Firstly, there must be a god, a divine entity that takes sufficient interest in the affairs of men to be concerned about transgressions of law and custom. Secondly, the divinity must possess supernatural knowledge and insight that permits an infallible assessment of innocence and guilt. Thirdly, the divinity must be ever aware when he is being invoked and his intervention desired. Fourthly, the divinity must subscribe to the procedure practiced by the priest, be willing to observe the ritual and act according to its protocols. Lastly, the divinity must be able and willing to exercise the power and work whatever miracles are necessary to carry out the curse. --- Worshipers asking a lot of their god!
3. The punishment for infidelity is, for a woman, losing her ability to have children and becoming a pariah in the community. The second is easily inflicted, but the first requires miraculous action. One is divine punishment, the other communal. As for the first, one may ask why a ceremony is required to determine guilt when the divinity sees all and knows all. Why, if sin is be punished by God in this world, are rituals and priestly intermediaries even necessary. And if the deity is engaged in exacting such punishment, why does he need the assistance of mortals in any capacity?
4. If a wife is unfaithful and her husband never suspects anything, at least has no suspicion that warrants taking her to the priest, then apparently she gets off scot free, at least for the present, as Jehovah only punishes adulterers who are taken to the priest and made to drink the bitter water. It seems that a just god would punish even the offenders who are clever and evade being caught.
5. Water would not be made bitter per se simply by having some dust added to it, but "bitter" is respect to water can mean not only acrid, but merely bad tasting, undrinkable, just as "sweet" means good to drink and not sugary in taste.
6. An interesting feature of the ritual is the priest writing down the curse and then washing away the writing in the bitter water. It reminds one of ritual magic. Something written down is somehow invested with power -- this, at a time when writing, initially in hieroglyphics and centuries later in an alphabet, was something special, for only the learned were literate and writing seemed mystical.
7. One wonders if the Israelites ever found out that an accursed adulteress could still have children, in spite of Jehovah’s curse. But fear of divine punishment has always been a fairly effective discouragement to bad behavior. Man, though, has always felt that sin should be punished and sinners receive their comeuppance in the here and now. Unfortunately, in real life and in the unjust world, it isn’t always obvious that this occurs, at least in the form and with the regularity that one would wish.
8. The husband of the adulterous wife bears no guilt. It’s never his fault. The adulteress is guilty, period, apparently with no consideration of extenuating circumstances. And the husband is not at fault for his false suspicions or the humiliation he causes his faithful wife by initiating this ritual.
9. How this test might work in practice is questionable. Drinking dirty water cannot be expected to have much effect upon the innocent or upon the guilty. If there isn’t some divine intervention every time the test is made, then effectiveness must rely upon the conscience of the adulteress producing sufficient psychosomatic pain to tip off the priest to her guilt.
10. The woman who went through this adultery test and was deemed innocent could supposedly pick up her life and have children. But how would she feel about the suspicious husband who had mistrusted her? What would happen if her next pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage? Wouldn’t everyone then say she was guilty? Wouldn’t the shame of having to undergo this ritual be devastating? Wouldn’t it also be embarrassing as well for the husband, who, if he suspected his wife was unfaithful, could just as easily divorce her or send her off into the desert? Happily, while the Bible presents a goodly number of adulterous wives, there is little record of this test having been practiced.
No comments:
Post a Comment