Trial of Jealousy - Numbers 4 & 5

Chapter 4 seems to another Lenite census but this time there’s a difference. In the chapter 3 census of Levites, it’s counting the Levite men aged 1 month and up. This was to make sure that there were enough Levite priests to assume all the priesthood responsibilities that were previously done by the first born Israelites of every family. In fact, at the end, there was a 1 to 1 substitution of Levite priests to Israelite first born home priests and there were left over like 200 and something more from one group to another that had to be redeemed. But this census in chapter 4 only counts Levite priests aged 30 to 50. This was because actually carrying the pieces of the tabernacle were very heavy and needed to be done by strong men and men with the maturity to understand that these things were sacred and were to be treated with respect. Additionally, this was to carry out the priestly duties that needed to be treated with respect and reverence, and the men needed to be old enough to guard and defend the tabernacle as needed.

Chapter 5 pivots a little bit and has to do with a couple of different topics. The first is that those with sores were to be kept outside of the camps of Israel, and this is probably mostly for sanitation and health purposes. But the biggest part of chapter 5 has to do with a trial of jealousy which is where a man who is suspicious that his wife was unfaithful to him could take her to be tested for this by God. It’s a pretty complicated event that I don’t quite understand but it’s basically where the husband accuses the wife of cheating, she denies the allegations, so they go to the high priest, or eventually Jerusalem, and she undergoes this process where she is put into black clothes, the accusations against her are written on paper with a non-toxic ink, then something is burned and the ink of the accusations and the ashes of what was burned are put into water and she has to drink it. After she drinks it either she is fine which indicates that she was in fact innocent and then taken home by her husband or she gets very sick and she’s sent outside of the city to die because she’s guilty.

This seems very Salem witch trials to me, but the IM has a very comprehensive explanation of it and why it is actually evidence of God’s mercy to women at this point in time. The first point is that even though there is no such ritual for a man accused of adultery, if the woman is found guilty by God and dies, then the man she had the affair with was to be put to death also. Additionally, if a woman suspected her husband was having an affair, she could accuse the woman she thought he was having an affair with and the other woman would have to undergo this process and if found guilty by God, then the cheating husband would be put to death for adultery as well.

The other point was that if there was no proof of the wife’s adultery, the husband would always have suspicions about the wife as well as the neighbors and other people who lived around them. But if the woman underwent this ritual and was found innocent by God, then her husband and people around her could be assured that she is innocent and not remain suspicious. There is a Reddit comment about the trial of jealousy that I thought was good, it says that the accused woman “would not be affected by a mixture of dust and water; the efficiency of the curse of the bitter water would require divine intervention on the part of God and therefore acted as a safeguard against manipulated results and reinforced that the verdict could only be given by God alone. Vindication is a clear default; only divine intervention could render a guilty verdict.” This was an excellent comment that helped me understand that it wasn’t luck of the draw if that mixture affected that woman like I supposed that it would, but only if God specifically intervened would there be an adverse reaction indicating her guilt. Very interesting.

The comment also makes another interesting point saying, “5:31 also implies condemnation for the man if his wife is innocent. His status of being ‘free of guilt’ is only applied after it has been demonstrated that she indeed is guilty of adultery. It the trial shows her to be innocent, the man is not free of guilt. Thus the man ought not to be zealous to charge his wife with adultery lest he be condemned himself.” Excellent aside thrown in there. The IM ends it’s explanation saying, “Thus, in a world where the rights of women were often abused, the Lord provided a means for protecting their rights as well as seeing that evil was put away and justice done.” So only if the damage that the adulterous woman was doing to the wellbeing of Israel was so bad that God Himself wanted her destroyed, this would allow women to be spared from false convictions of adultery and all the negative consequences that came with that. Very interesting.