Numbers 5:29

"This is the law of jealousy, when a wife, being under her husband, goeth aside, and is defiled, or when the spirit of jealousy cometh upon a man, and he is jealous of his wife, then shall he set the woman before Jehovah, and the priest shall execute upon her all this law. And the man shall be free from iniquity, and that woman shall bear her iniquity."

"The man shall be free from iniquity ..." (Numbers 5:31). This means that no guilt would be attached to a man who thus subjected his wife to trial, even though she should be declared innocent. Some commentators take an opposite view, supposing that, in case the trial resulted in the death penalty for the woman, the husband would be free of blame. We find no basis for agreement with that view.

This short paragraph is only a summary of the whole law on this ordeal. Before leaving this, we stress once more that, "It was ever the wisdom of God, as revealed in the sacred volume, to take men as they were, and to utilize the superstitious notions that could not at once be destroyed."[24] At the time of the giving of the Pentateuch, trials by ordeals were deeply rooted in the customs of all mankind, and well-nigh universal. The Israelites themselves were strongly biased in favor of such things, but this law of jealousies incorporated here was brought into the Mosaic system, "in order to free it from the idolatrous rites practiced by the heathen."[25]

There is no Biblical record of any person's ever having had recourse to this ordeal in order to procure a verdict either of guilt or of innocence, and therefore, it seems logical to conclude that it stands in the sacred text more as a foil against pagan superstitions than as anything else.