Numbers 5:11-31

THE ORDEAL FOR A SUSPECTED WIFE, Numbers 5:11-31.

It has been said that the only bliss of paradise that has survived the fall is conjugal love. But even this blessing has not survived without alloys. Plighted love is sometimes unfaithful, and the sweets of wedded life are occasionally embittered by jealousy. To protect the institution of marriage the corner-stone of human society to vindicate the innocent and to punish the guilty, special rules of procedure are here ordained by Jehovah. From the nature of the crime of conjugal infidelity the usual method of proof by two or three witnesses could not be employed. Hence an extra-judicial procedure is instituted. The Lord sits upon the judgment seat, and the guilt or innocence is to be determined by himself. The ordeal is some method of appeal to God to interpose, in a supernatural manner, to indicate the guilty and to deliver the innocent lying under a false accusation. It was resorted to by our rude European ancestors when they required the suspected person to handle hot iron, or to run barefoot and blindfold in a path strewn with nine red-hot ploughshares, or to plunge the arm up to the elbow in boiling water. If God interposed to prevent harm the accused was deemed innocent. This was the ordeal by fire and by water. It will be seen, as we proceed to the study of the divine ordeal for jealousy, that it differs from all human methods of appeal to the judgment of God in this: God’s ordeal involves a supernatural punishment of the guilty, while human systems require a miracle to shield the innocent. Men’s inventions jeopardize the innocent, God’s method imperils only the wicked. Some such trial of jealousy was probably traditional in the day of Moses. The Divine Lawgiver divests it of its barbarous severities, and interposes it as a merciful shield against the blind vindictiveness of jealousy characteristic of the Orientals. The mode here commanded was a great improvement upon the former method of procedure; and, like the divorces permitted by Moses on account of the hardness of the hearts of capricious husbands, was the legislation best adapted to the condition of the people at that time. There is no account of the enforcement of this ordeal, and there is grave doubt whether recourse was ever had to it in fact. It certainly was not in harmony with the laxity of the nuptial tie prevalent in the time of Jesus Christ. Its parallel is found in the ordeal of the “red water” in Western Africa, and also in an Egyptian romance recently translated by Brugsch: “Ptahneferka copies out on a leaf of papyrus every word of a certain magical formula, dissolves the writing in water, drinks, and knows all that it contains.” SMITH’S Biblical Dictionary.