Numbers 5:11 - Meaning and Application

Here we have the law for the solemn testing of a wife when her husband suspects her of adultery. We should first notice the case the law assumes: a man has reason to think his wife has been unfaithful (Numbers 5:12-14).

Adultery is treated here as a very serious sin. It turns a person away from God, from virtue, and from the right path (Proverbs 2:17). It also wrongs the husband, steals his honor, violates his rights, and brings a false child into his family to share the inheritance with his own children. It breaks the marriage covenant and defiles the conscience, because few sins stain the mind more deeply than this one.

The law also assumes that such sin is often hidden carefully, with no witness to it. The adulterer waits for darkness, and the adulteress looks for the time when the husband is away (Job 24:15; Proverbs 7:19). Sin wants secrecy because it is shameful. The devil, who tempts people into this sin, also teaches them how to hide it.

The husband’s jealousy is also part of the case. Solomon says jealousy is fierce like the grave, and a jealous man’s rage is hard to calm (Proverbs 6:34; Song of Songs 8:6). Still, the husband was not meant to act on wild suspicion alone. Jewish writers said he had to have some just reason for his suspicion, though the law itself does not bind him to only one way of proving it. If adultery could be proved, the woman was to be put to death (Leviticus 20:10). If it could not be proved, this law gave a way to deal with the matter.

This should warn wives not to give even the smallest reason for suspicion. They must avoid not only evil itself, but also anything that looks like evil, leads toward it, or might stir jealousy. A little spark can start a large fire. Husbands should also be warned not to give way to groundless suspicion. Love, and even more marriage love, should teach a person not to think evil without cause (1 Corinthians 13:5). It is the blessing of a good woman that her husband can trust her fully (Proverbs 31:11).

The purpose of this procedure was clear. If the wife was innocent, she should not keep living under her husband’s suspicion and shame. If she was guilty, her sin would be exposed, and others would hear, fear, and learn caution.

The process of the test went like this. First, the husband brought his wife to the priest, along with any witnesses that supported his suspicion, and asked for a trial. The Jews said the priest was first to urge her to tell the truth. He would speak to her kindly and press her to confess if she had sinned, so that God’s holy name would not be dishonored by the bitter water. If she confessed, saying she was defiled, she was not put to death, but she was divorced and lost her dowry. If she claimed to be pure, the trial went forward.

Next, the husband was to bring a barley offering, without oil or frankincense. This plain offering fit the sorrowful state of the family. It was an offering of remembrance, showing that the matter was being placed before God’s knowledge and justice. The priest then prepared the water of jealousy, using holy water from the laver where the priests washed. It was to be placed in an earthen vessel, and the plain, rough vessel suited the occasion. Dust from the tabernacle floor was mixed into the water, to picture the shame she was under and the humility she should feel. Yet the dust was taken from the tabernacle, to show honor for the place where God had chosen to set his name.

Then the woman was set before the Lord, and, according to the Jews, at the east gate of the temple court. Her head was uncovered as a sign of sorrow. She stood as a public warning, so other women might learn not to follow such sin (Ezekiel 23:48). The Jews also said her own servants were not present, so she would not be shamed before those who should still show respect to her. Her husband was also sent away.

Then the priest made her swear the oath and pronounced the curse if she was guilty, while also telling her what would happen if she drank the water. If she was innocent, it would do her no harm (Numbers 5:19). No one needs to fear the curse of God’s law if they have not broken it. But if she was guilty, the water would become poison to her. It would cause her belly to swell and her body to waste away, and she would become a curse and shame among her people (Numbers 5:21-22). She was to answer, Amen, as Israel later did when agreeing to the curses on Mount Ebal (Deuteronomy 27:15-26). Some think the doubled Amen covered both parts of the oath, the promise of safety if innocent and the curse if guilty.

A guilty woman could not truly say Amen to such an oath unless she had hardened herself against God. To drink the water while guilty would mean either denying God’s truth or mocking his justice. It would show a person so brazen in sin that she would rather risk God’s curse than confess and give him glory. That is how sexual sin can harden the heart.

Finally, the priest wrote the curse on a scroll and then washed the words into the water (Numbers 5:23). This showed that the curse itself gave the water its power for judgment. It also showed that, if she was innocent, the curse would be erased and never stand against her, as God says he blots out sin (Isaiah 43:25; Psalm 51:9). But if she was guilty, the written curse, now mixed into the water, would go into her body and bring judgment inside her, like oil sinking into bones (Psalm 109:18). It would be like a curse entering a house and taking hold there (Zechariah 5:4).

Then the woman had to drink the water (Numbers 5:24). It is called the bitter water, some think because they mixed wormwood into it to make it bitter, or more likely because it brought the curse. In that sense, sin is called evil and bitter for the same reason, because it brings a curse (Jeremiah 2:19). If she was guilty, then she learned that although her stolen waters had seemed sweet and her secret bread pleasant, the end was bitter like wormwood (Proverbs 9:17; Proverbs 5:4). Anyone who chases forbidden pleasure should know that its end will be bitter.

The Jews say that if the curse terrified the woman so much that she refused to drink and confessed her guilt, the priest poured out the water, threw her offering among the ashes, and she was divorced without a dowry. If she still would not confess, yet refused to drink, they forced her to drink. If she seemed ready to vomit the water back up, they hurried her away so she would not defile the holy place.

Before she drank, the jealousy offering was waved and offered on the altar (Numbers 5:25, 26). A handful was burned as a memorial, and the rest was eaten by the priest, unless the husband was a priest. In that case, it was scattered among the ashes. This part of the ceremony showed that the whole matter was an appeal to God, who knows everything and from whom no secret is hidden.

When all was done according to the law, they had to wait for God to show the result. The water, with a little dust and the scrapings of the written scroll, had no power by itself to do harm or good. But when God was appealed to through this ordained ceremony, he would honor his own institution. In time, by his providence, the innocent woman would be cleared, and the guilty woman’s sin would find her out.

If the woman was truly guilty, the water she drank would become poison to her (Numbers 5:27). Her belly would swell, and her thigh would waste away through a shameful disease, as a fitting punishment for shameful sin. She would grieve at last when her flesh and body were consumed (Proverbs 5:11). Bishop Patrick says, from some Jewish writers, that the effect showed up at once: she turned pale, and her eyes seemed ready to burst from their sockets. Dr. Lightfoot says that sometimes it did not appear for two or three years, but she remained childless, sickly, weak, and ended in ruin. It is likely that some signs appeared right away.

The rabbis say that the adulterer also died the same day and hour as the adulteress, and in the same way. They say his belly swelled and his private parts decayed. This may have been a disease not unlike the one that, in later times, God has used as a punishment for sexual impurity, by which prostitutes and their partners infect, spread, and ruin one another when they escape human punishment. The Jewish teachers also say that this water had that effect on the adulteress only if her husband had never done the same thing. If he had polluted the marriage bed, God did not punish his wife in this way for his sake. For that reason, in later and more corrupt times among the Jews, when uncleanness became common, this test was mostly stopped. Men who knew their own sins were content not to learn their wives’ sins. This may be part of the warning in Hosea 4:14, “I will not punish your daughters when they commit adultery, or your brides when they commit adultery, because you yourselves go aside with prostitutes.”

If she was innocent, the water she drank would be medicine to her: “She shall be free, and shall conceive seed” (Numbers 5:28). The Jewish writers greatly praise the good effects of this water for the innocent woman. They say that, to make up for the wrong done to her by suspicion, she would afterward be stronger and look better than before. If she had been sickly, she would become healthy, bear a son, and have an easy labor.

From the whole matter we may learn that secret sins are known to God, and sometimes they are strangely brought to light in this life. Still, a day is coming when God, through Jesus Christ, will judge the hidden things of men according to the gospel, as the priest did here in a figure (Romans 2:16). We also learn that God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers. Breaking marriage faith and purity is a serious offense against the God of heaven, and sooner or later it will be answered for. We do not have these waters of jealousy now as a visible warning to the unclean, but we do have God’s word, which should be warning enough: if anyone defiles God’s temple, God will destroy him (1 Corinthians 3:17).

We also learn that God will find some way to clear the innocent and bring their righteousness into the light. And we learn that to the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled, nothing is truly pure (Titus 1:15). The same word is to some a message of life, and to others a message of death, like these waters of jealousy, depending on how they receive it. The same providence is good for some and harmful to others (Jeremiah 24:5, 8, 9). Whatever God intends by it, his word will not return empty.