Board index ‹ Specific Bible verses, texts, and passages ‹ Numbers

[Salam]

Can you please explain the water spell in Numbers 5? It also seems like a very unfair test of a woman's faithfulness to her husband. Thanks.

[jimwalton]

Glad to explain.

The text is about a woman who is accused of hooking up, and whose husband is upset, obviously, and wants her to come clean about it. First, he is to take an offering to God as a way to ask the Lord’s participation and guidance in the proceedings. Then the wife is to drink some water from the tabernacle mixed with some dust from the tabernacle floor, both of which would be symbols of their relationship with God and their (supposed and assumed) commitment to honor God. By drinking the water, she would in effect be agreeing (like a vow to God) to tell the ruth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Then when the priest asks her if the accusation against her is true or not, she’s bound to her word and bound to tell the truth, with penalty for perjury. That’s the point of the process. And then if it is shown that she was faithful and her husband was wrongly suspicious, then God will bless her, and if it s shown that she was a naughty girl and did the wild thing (or if she lies about it to cover it up), that God would punish her for that breach of covenant against both Him and her husband.

Other cultures used a “trial by ordeal” kind of process where the accused is placed “in the hand of God” by some mechanism, generally one that will put the accused in jeopardy, such as drinking poison or being set on fire. And if the deity intervenes to protect them, then that’s a declaration of acquittal. Obviously, this is a “guilty until proven innocent” scenario. Hammurabi used a “river ordeal” for trials in his court.

But these are not to be the way of the Israelites. This process, outlined in Numbers 5.11-13, involves neither magic nor day, but simply creates a symbolic situation for the woman to tell the truth and for God to respond. The woman here is presumed innocent until circumstances and evidence (directed by the Lord) show otherwise.