Week 50, Day 5: Test for Adultery

Today’s Reading:  Numbers 5:1-31

Some thoughts from today’s reading…

We are given in chapter 5 a test that a jealous husband could have done when he suspected that his wife had cheated on him.  It is an interesting test to say the least.  The woman would be taken by the priest before the Lord and made to drink the “water of bitterness”.  The priest had put into this water dirt from the floor of the tabernacle and also he would wash off the words of a curse written on a scroll into this water.  After offering the grain offering of jealousy for the husband the woman would drink the water.  If she was guilty then her thigh would waste away and her abdomen would swell.  If not guilty then nothing would happen.  In this manner God provided a way for a husband to know for sure if his wife had been guilty of adultery.  Verse 31 says that she would bear the guilt.  I take this to mean that she would then be stoned, which was the punishment for those caught in adultery. 

Question:  Why do you think a guilty woman would be willing to go through with this test?

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