Numbers 5:1

This chapter recounts the law regarding the exclusion of diseased and unclean persons from the camp of Israel (Numbers 5:1-4), the resolution of the problem of restitution in case of the death of the victim (Numbers 5:5-10), and the regulations for the trial of jealousies (Numbers 5:11-32), three or four paragraphs being devoted to the latter.

Questions usually arising from the text of this chapter include complaints that it does not seem to follow any plan, and wonderment that God should have included here the type of trial by ordeal which was so notoriously featured in the myths, superstitions, and pagan worship reaching back to the dawn of history.

Regarding the first of these questions, the "plan" of Numbers follows somewhat the pattern of a personal diary in which events appear in the sequence of their occurrence without regard to any identifiable connection with each other. For example, the supplementary law God gave here for the exclusion of unclean and diseased persons (Numbers 5:1-4) probably arose out of a situation in which earlier laws in the Pentateuch were somewhat ambiguous. The clarification appearing in this supplement is that all such persons were to be put out of the camp.

Regarding the laws regarding restitution (Numbers 5:5-10), the need for this probably arose from a situation in which a penitent confessed his sin and was prepared to make restitution to the person wronged, but in the meanwhile the death of that person left a situation that required further legislation, which God promptly gave.

With reference to the "pagan" type of ordeal seen in the rules for the trial by jealousies, the necessity for this could have come out of a situation where a jealous husband sought action against his wife. At that time, the world was full of "trials by ordeal"; and in order to prevent any Israelite from resorting to one of those infamous pagan ordeals, a very mild and harmless substitute for such trials was provided by God in the specific regulations given here. Any judgment of an adverse nature falling upon any woman subject to the "trial" in view here would have had to be the direct intervention of God Himself, a feature that opens an impassable gulf between the Mosaic laws and the mythical superstitions of paganism.

Thus, it appears that the continuing narrative in Numbers is a logical and valid part of the divine regulations that protected and guided Israel in the wilderness. The arrangement, throughout, could have been due to the chronological sequence in which the necessity for supplementary and additional rules appeared. Thus, we reject as pedantic and undependable the complaint of Gray that the events of this chapter have "little relation to one another."[1]

"And Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying, Command the children of Israel, that they put out of the camp every leper, and every one that hath an issue, and whosoever is unclean by the dead: both male and female shall ye put out, without the camp shall ye put them; that they defile not their camp, in the midst whereof I dwell. And the children of Israel did so, and put them out without the camp; as Jehovah spake unto Moses, so did the children of Israel."

When compared with the rules in Leviticus, it is evident that supplementary information is here supplied.

(1) The rule applies to females, as well as males.

(2) The reason for the exclusion is given in Numbers 5:3, that being the identity of their camp as the place where God Himself dwelt in their midst.

(3) There also appears the extension of including "all," "every one" who had any kind of issue, as distinguished from those who had certain kinds only. "In Leviticus 15, where these defilements are treated, it is not expressly ordered that those thus polluted should be put out of the camp."[2] Jamieson remarked that

(4) the prevention of contagion was also a vital reason for these exclusions, the same being "almost the only instance in which any kind of attention is paid in the East to the prevention of contagion."[3]

How remarkably all of these instructions contrast with the gross filthiness and uncleanness that from the utmost antiquity has prevailed in pagan, uncivilized populations! God taught His people the value of cleanness. As Whitelaw said, "With the Jews, cleanliness was not next to godliness, it was "part of godliness!"[4]