Numbers 5:23

_AND THE PRIEST SHALL WRITE THESE CURSES IN A BOOK, AND HE SHALL BLOT THEM OUT WITH THE BITTER WATER:_ Write these curses in a book. The imprecations, along with her name, were inscribed in some kind of record-on parchment, or more probably on a wooden tablet. BLOT THEM OUT WITH THE BITTER WATER, х_ MAACHAAH_ (H4229)] - wipe off, blot out. Here it is presumed that the material on which the writing was did not dissolve by the water, but only that the writing was thereby washed off. In this case paper was excluded. On the other hand, the writing must have been with ink, otherwise it could not have been so easily obliterated-a circumstance which also excludes the byssus (Havernick's 'General Historico-Critical Introduction to the Old Testament'). If she were innocent, they could be easily erased, and perfectly harmless; but if guilty, she would experience the fatal effects of the water sh...

11-31 This law would make the women of Israel watch against giving cause for suspicion. On the other hand, it would hinder the cruel treatment such suspicions might occasion. It would also hinder the guilty from escaping, and the innocent from coming under just suspicion. When no proof could be brought, the wife was called on to make this solemn appeal to a heart-searching God. No woman, if she were guilty, could say "Amen" to the adjuration, and drink the water after it, unless she disbelieved the truth of God, or defied his justice. The water is called the bitter water, because it caused the curse. Thus sin is called an evil and a bitter thing. Let all that meddle with forbidden pleasures, know that they will be bitterness in the latter end. From the whole learn, 1. Secret sins are known to God, and sometimes are strangely brought to light in this life; and that there is a day coming...

Verse Numbers 5:23. _THE PRIEST SHALL WRITE THESE CURSES - AND HE SHALL BLOT_ THEM _OUT_] It appears that the curses which were written down with a kind of ink prepared for the purpose, as some of the rabbins think, without any calx of iron or other material that could make a permanent dye, were washed off the parchment into the water which the woman was obliged to drink, so that she drank the very _words_ of the execration. The ink used in the East is almost all of this kind - a wet sponge will completely efface the finest of their writings. The rabbins say that the trial by the waters of jealousy was omitted after the Babylonish captivity, because adulteries were so frequent amongst them, that they were afraid of having the name of the Lord profaned by being so frequently appealed to! This is a most humiliating confession. "Though," says pious Bishop Wilson...

The trial of jealousy. Since the crime of adultery is especially defiling and destructive of the very foundations of social order, the whole subject is dealt with at a length proportionate to its importance. The process prescribed has lately been strikingly illustrated from an Egyptian “romance,” which refers to the time of Rameses the Great, and may therefore well serve to illustrate the manners and customs of the Mosaic times. This mode of trial, like several other ordinances, was adopted by Moses from existing and probably very ancient and widely spread institutions. Numbers 5:15 The offering was to be of the cheapest and coarsest kind, barley (compare 2 Kings 7:1,...

EXPOSITION THE TRIAL OF JEALOUSY (Numbers 5:11-4). NUMBERS 5:12 IF ANY MAN'S WIFE … COMMIT A TRESPASS AGAINST HIM. The adultery of the wife is here regarded only from a social point of view; the injury to the husband, the destruction of his peace of mind, even by the bare suspicion, and the consequent troubling of Israel, is the thing dwelt upon. The punishment of adultery as a sin had been already prescribed (Le Numbers 20:10). NUMBERS 5:13 If it be laid. Or, "if he be hid." This ve

AND THE PRIEST SHALL WRITE THESE CURSES IN A BOOK,.... The above curses imprecated on herself by an oath; the words and the letters of them were written at length, in a scroll of parchment; and, as some say also, her name, but not her double amen to them y: AND HE SHALL BLOT [THEM] OUT WITH THE BITTER WATER: wash them out with it, and into it, or scrape them off of the parchment into it. y Misnah, ut supra, (Sotah, c. 2) sect. 3....

4. THE SANCTIFICATION OF THE CAMP AND THE NAZARITE CHAPTER 5 _ 1. Concerning the leper, the issue and defilement of the dead (Numbers 5:1)_ 2. Concerning restitution (Numbers 5:5) 3. Concerning the wife suspected of adultery (Numbers 5:11) So far we had the outward arrangement of the camp. This chapter tells us that the camp had to be holy and therefore must be cleansed from that which defiles. Divine directions are given concerning the unclean person, the restitution of anything unjustly taken and what is to be done with a wife suspected of adultery. Leprosy could not be tolerated in the camp in the midst whereof Jehovah dwelt. The persons who had an issue and had come in touch with the de

AN ORDEAL IN CASES OF JEALOUSY. A married woman suspected of unfaithfulness is, in the absence of evidence, to be subjected to an ordeal by being made to drink holy water with which dust from the floor of the Tabernacle has been mingled, and in which a writing inscribed with a curse has been steeped. In the event of her innocence the potion proves harmless, and she becomes fruitful; in the event of her guilt, it injures her (probably by producing abortion). Ordeals similar to the one here enjoined were not uncommon in antiquity Pausanias, for instance, mentions that at a sanctuary of Earth (Γῆ?), in Arcadia, the chastity of the priestesses was tested by their being made to drink bull's blood, which brought down instant retribution upon the unchaste. In the Hebrew ordeal the potion which the suspected woman was compelled to drink had a threefold potency. In the first place, the water (des...

The Ordeal of Jealousy. Though in its present form a late priestly composition this section is evidently based upon very ancient material. Its contents find no parallel in the other Pentateuchal codes; but the custom of trial by ordeal was a very ancient feature in Israelite life, as it was in the life of many other nations, and it still has a wide prevalence, especially in Africa. The forms of ordeal differ greatly drinking a potion (as here), being thrown into water (as in the case of suspected witches in the middle ages in Europe), walking upon heated metal, or holding it in the hand, or very frequently invoking upon oneself a curse which will come true in the event of guilt. The latter, as well as the potion, forms part of the ordeal in the present passage1 [Note: References to ordeals in other nations are given in Gray's Numbers, pp. 44 f.]. Another Biblical instance of an ordeal a...

THE PRIEST SHALL WRITE THESE CURSES IN A BOOK, &C.— The Jews call every scroll, whereon any thing is written, ספר _sepher,_ a _book;_ and the rabbis tell us, that these maledictions were written upon vellum or parchment: but Calmet observes, that it is far from certain that parchment was used for writing in the time of Moses, or many ages after; and the original word often signifies _tablets_ of plain wood, or covered over with wax, which was the most ancient manner of writing; see his dissertation _Sur les Livres Anciens._ These curses, wrote thus, most probably in wax, were to be _wiped off at_ or _into the bitter water,_ אלאּמי _el-mei;_ so that the woman was, as it were, to drink the curse itself. It is plain that the _jealousy-offering_ was made before the woman drank the water, Numbers 5:26....