1And Jehovah spoke to Moses, saying: 2Command the children of Israel that they send out of the camp every leper, everyone who has a discharge, and everyone who is unclean because of the dead. 3You shall send out both male and female; you shall send them outside the camp, that they not defile their camps in the midst of which I dwell. 4And the children of Israel did so, and sent them outside the camp; as Jehovah had spoken to Moses, so the children of Israel did. 5And Jehovah spoke to Moses, saying, 6Speak to the children of Israel: When a man or woman commits any sin that men commit in unfaithfulness against Jehovah, and that soul is guilty, 7then they shall confess the sin which they have done. He shall make restitution for his trespass in full, add a fifth to it, and give it to the one he has wronged. 8But if the man has no relative to whom restitution may be made for the wrong, the restitution for the wrong shall go to Jehovah for the priest, besides the ram of the atonement with which atonement is made for him. 9Every offering of all the holy things of the children of Israel, which they bring to the priest, shall be his. 10And every man's holy things shall be his; whatever any man gives to the priest shall be his. 11And Jehovah spoke to Moses, saying, 12Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: If any man's wife turns aside and transgresses in unfaithfulness toward him, 13and a man has lain with her with the seed of intercourse, and it is hidden from the eyes of her husband, and it is concealed that she has been defiled, and there was no witness against her, nor has she been caught; 14if the spirit of jealousy comes upon him and he becomes jealous of his wife, who has been defiled; or if the spirit of jealousy comes upon him and he becomes jealous of his wife, although she has not been defiled; 15then the man shall bring his wife to the priest. He shall bring the offering for her, one-tenth of an ephah of barley meal; he shall pour no oil on it and put no frankincense on it, because it is a grain offering of jealousy, an offering for remembering, for bringing iniquity to remembrance. 16And the priest shall bring her near, and make her stand before Jehovah. 17The priest shall take holy water in an earthen vessel, and take some of the dust that is on the floor of the tabernacle and put it into the water. 18And the priest shall make the woman stand before Jehovah, uncover the woman's head, and put the offering for remembering in her hands, which is the grain offering of jealousy. And in the priest's hand shall be the bitter water that brings a curse. 19And the priest shall charge her under oath, and say to the woman, If no man has lain with you, and if you have not turned aside to uncleanness while under your husband, be free from this bitter water that brings a curse. 20But if you have turned aside while under your husband, and if you have been defiled and some man besides your husband has lain with you; 21then the priest shall charge the woman under the oath of the curse, and he shall say to the woman: Jehovah make you a curse and an oath among your people, when Jehovah makes your thigh waste away and your belly swell; 22and this water that causes the curse shall go into your stomach, and make your belly swell and your thigh waste away. And the woman shall say, Amen, amen. 23And the priest shall write these curses in a book, and he shall wipe them off into the bitter water. 24And he shall make the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and the water that brings the curse shall enter into her to become bitter. 25And the priest shall take the grain offering of jealousy from the woman's hand, shall wave the offering before Jehovah, and bring it to the altar; 26and the priest shall take a handful of the offering, as its memorial portion, burn it on the altar with smoke, and afterward make the woman drink the water. 27When he has made her drink the water, then it shall be, if she has been defiled and transgressed in unfaithfulness toward her husband, that the water that brings a curse shall enter into her and become bitter, and her belly shall swell, her thigh shall waste away, and the woman shall become a curse among her people. 28But if the woman has not been defiled, and is pure, then she shall be free and shall conceive children. 29This is the law of jealousy, when a wife, while under her husband, turns aside and has been defiled; 30or when the spirit of jealousy comes upon a man, and he becomes jealous of his wife; then he shall make the woman stand before Jehovah, and the priest shall pass all this law upon her. 31And the man shall be free from iniquity, but the woman shall bear her iniquity.
Matthew Henry - Complete Commentary 1 Here is, I. A command for the purifying of the camp, by turning out from within its lines all those that were ceremonially unclean, by issues, leprosies, or the touch of dead bodies, until they were cleansed according to the law,
Num 5:2,
Num 5:3.
1. These orders are executed immediately,
Num 5:4. (1.) The camp was now newly-modelled and put in order, and therefore, to complete the reformation of it, it is next to be cleansed. Note, The purity of the church must be as carefully consulted and preserved as the peace and order of it. It is requisite, not only that every Israelite be confined to his own standard, but that every polluted Israelite be separated from it.
The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable. (2.) God's tabernacle was now fixed in the midst of their camp, and therefore they must be careful to keep it clean. Note, The greater profession of religion any house or family make the more they are obliged to
put away iniquity far from their tabernacle, Job 22:23. The person, the place,
in the midst of which God dwells, must not be defiled; for, if it be, he will be affronted, offended, and provoked to withdraw,
1Cor 3:16,
1Cor 3:17.
2. This expulsion of the unclean out of the camp was to signify, (1.) What the governors of the church ought to do: they must
separate between the precious and the vile, and purge out scandalous persons, as old leaven (
1Cor 5:8,
1Cor 5:13), lest others should be infected and defiled,
Hebre 12:15. It is for the glory of Christ and the edification of his church that those who are openly and incorrigibly profane and vicious should be put out and kept from Christian communion till they repent. (2.) What God himself will do in the great day: he will
thoroughly purge his floor, and
gather out of his kingdom all things that offend. As here the unclean were shut out of the camp, so into the new Jerusalem
no unclean thing shall enter, Revel 21:27.
II. A law concerning restitution, in case of wrong done to a neighbour. It is called
a sin that men commit (
Num 5:6), because it is common among men;
a sin of man, that is,
a sin against man, so it is thought it should be translated and understood. If a man overreach or defraud his brother in any matter, it is to be looked upon as a trespass against the Lord, who is the protector of right, the punisher of wrong, and who strictly charges and commands us to do justly. Now what is to be done when a man's awakened conscience charges him with guilt of this kind, and brings it to his remembrance though done long ago? 1. He must
confess his sin, confess it to God, confess it to his neighbour, and so take shame to himself. If he have denied it before, though it go against the grain to own himself in a lie, yet he must do it; because his heart was hardened he denied it, therefore he has no other way of making it appear that his heart is now softened but by confessing it. 2. He must bring a sacrifice, a
ram of atonement, Num 5:8. Satisfaction must be made for the offence done to God, whose law is broken, as well as for the loss sustained by our neighbour; restitution in this case is not sufficient without faith and repentance. 3. Yet the sacrifices would not be accepted till full amends were made to the party wronged, not only the principal, but a fifth part added to it,
Num 5:7. It is certain that while that which is got by injustice is knowingly retained in the hands the guilt of the injustice remains upon the conscience, and is not purged by sacrifice nor offering, prayers not tears, for it is one and the same continued act of sin persisted in. This law we had before (
Lev 6:4), and it is here added that if the party wronged was dead, and he had no near kinsman who was entitled to the debt, or if it was any way uncertain to whom the restitution should be made, this should not serve for an excuse to detain what was unjustly gotten; to whomsoever it pertained, it was certainly none of his that got it by sin, and therefore it must be given to the priest,
Num 5:8. If there were any that could make out a title to it, it must not be given to the priest (God hates robbery for burnt-offerings); but, if there were not, then it lapsed to the great Lord (
ob defectum sanguinis -
for want of issue ), and the priests were his receivers. Note, Some work of piety or charity is a piece of necessary justice to be done by those who are conscience to themselves that they have done wrong, but know not how otherwise to make restitution; what is not our property will never be our profit.
III. A general rule concerning hallowed things given upon this occasion, that, whatever was given to the priest,
his it shall be, Num 5:9,
Num 5:10. 1. He that gave it was not to receive his gift again upon any pretence whatsoever. This law ratifies and confirms all grants for pious uses, that people might not give things to the priests in a fit of zeal, and then recall them in a fit of vexation. 2. The other priests should not come in sharers with that priest who then officiated, and to whom the hallowed thing, whatever it was, was given. Let him that was most ready and diligent in attending fare the better for it: if he do the work, let him have the pay, and much good may it do him.
11 We have here the law concerning the solemn trial of a wife whose husband was jealous of her. Observe,
I. What was the case supposed: That a man had some reason to suspect his wife to have committed adultery,
Num 5:12-
Num 5:14. Here, 1. The sin of adultery is justly represented as an exceedingly sinful sin; it is going aside from God and virtue, and the good way,
Prov 2:17. It is committing a trespass against the husband, robbing him of his honour, alienating his right, introducing a spurious breed into his family to share with his children in his estate, and violating her covenant with him. It is being defiled; for nothing pollutes the mind and conscience more than this sin does. 2. It is supposed to be a sin which great care is taken by the sinners to conceal, which there is no witness of.
The eye of the adulterer waits for the twilight, Job 24:15. And the adulteress takes her opportunity when
the good man is not at home, Prov 7:19. It would not covet to be secret if it were not shameful; and the devil who draws sinners to this sin teaches them how to cover it. 3. The
spirit of jealousy is supposed to come upon the husband, of which Solomon says, It is the
rage of a man (
Prov 6:34), and that it is
cruel as the grave, Cant 8:6. 4. Yet (say the Jewish writers) he must make it appear that he has some just cause for the suspicion. The rule they give is, If the husband have said unto his wife before witnesses, 'Be not thou in secret with such a man;' and, notwithstanding that admonition, it is afterwards proved that she was in secret with that man, though her father or her brother, then he may compel her to drink the bitter water. But the law here does not tie him to that particular method of proving the just cause of his suspicion; it might be otherwise proved. In case it could be proved that she had committed adultery, she was to be put to death (
Lev 20:10); but, if it was uncertain, then this law took place. Hence, (1.) Let all wives be admonished not to give any the least occasion for the suspicion of their chastity; it is not enough that they abstain from the evil of uncleanness, but they must abstain from all appearance of it, from every thing that looks like it, or leads to it, or may give the least umbrage to jealousy; for
how great a matter may a
little fire kindle! (2.) Let all husbands be admonished not to entertain any causeless or unjust suspicions of their wives. If charity in general, much more conjugal affection, teaches to
think no evil, 1Cor 13:5. It is the happiness of the virtuous woman that
the heart of her husband does safely trust in her, Prov 31:11.
II. What was the course prescribed in this case, that, if the suspected wife was innocent, she might not continue under the reproach and uneasiness of her husband's jealousy, and, if guilty, her sin might find her out, and others might hear, and fear, and take warning.
1. The process of the trial must be thus: - (1.) Her husband must
bring her to the priest, with the witnesses that could prove the ground of his suspicion, and desire that she might be put upon her trial. The Jews say that the priest was first to endeavour to persuade her to confess the truth, saying to this purport, Dear daughter, perhaps thou wast overtaken by drinking wine, or wast carried away by the heat of youth or the examples of bad neighbours; come, confess the truth, for the sake of his great name which is described in the most sacred ceremony, and do not let it be blotted out with the bitter water. If she confessed, saying, I am defiled, she was not put to death, but was divorced and lost her dowry; if she said, I am pure, then they proceeded. (2.) He must bring a coarse offering of barley-meal, without oil or frankincense, agreeably to the present afflicted state of his family; for a great affliction it was either to have cause to be jealous or to be jealous without cause. It is an
offering of memorial, to signify that what was to be done was intended as a religious appeal to the omniscience and justice of God. (3.) The priest was to prepare the water of jealousy, the holy water out of the laver at which the priests were to wash when they ministered; this must be brought in an
earthen vessel, containing (they say) about a pint; and it must be an
earthen vessel, because the coarser and plainer every thing was the more agreeable it was to the occasion.
Dust must be put into the water, to signify the reproach she lay under, and the shame she ought to take to herself, putting her mouth in the dust; but dust from
the floor of the tabernacle, to put an honour upon every thing that pertained to the place God had chosen to put his name there, and to keep up in the people a reverence for it; see
John 8:6. (4.) The woman was to be
set before the Lord, at the east gate of the temple-court (say the Jews), and her head was to be uncovered, in token of her sorrowful condition; and there she stood for a spectacle to the world, that other women might learn not to do
after her lewdness, Ezek 23:48. Only the Jews say, Her own servants were not to be present, that she might not seem vile in their sight, who were to give honour to her; her husband also must be dismissed. (5.) The priest was to adjure her to tell the truth, and to denounce the curse of God against her if she were guilty, and to declare what would be the effect of her drinking the water of jealousy,
Num 5:19-
Num 5:22. He must assure her that, if she were innocent, the water would do her no harm,
Num 5:19. None need fear the curse of the law if they have not broken the commands of the law. But, if she were guilty, this water would be poison to her, it would make her
belly to swell and her thigh to rot, and she should be a curse or abomination among her people,
Num 5:21,
Num 5:22. To this she must say,
Amen, as Israel must do to the curses pronounced on mount Ebal,
Deut 27:15-
Deut 27:26. Some think the
Amen, being doubled, respects both parts of the adjuration, both that which freed her if innocent and that which condemned her if guilty. No woman, if she were guilty, could say
Amen to this adjuration, and drink the water upon it, unless she disbelieved the truth of God or defied his justice, and had come to such a pitch of impudence and hard-heartedness in sin as to challenge God Almighty to do his worst, and choose rather to venture upon his curse than to give him glory by making confession; thus has whoredom
taken away the heart. (6.) The priest was to write this curse in a scrip or scroll o parchment,
verbatim -
word for word, as he had expressed it, and then to wipe or scrape out what he had written into the water (
Num 5:23), to signify that it was that curse which impregnated the water, and gave it its strength to effect what was intended. It signified that, if she were innocent, the curse should be blotted out and never appear against her, as it is written,
Isa 43:25,
I am he that blotteth out thy transgression, and
Pss 51:9,
Blot out my iniquities; but that, if she were guilty, the curse, as it was written, being infused into the water, would enter into her bowels with the water, even
like oil into her bones (
Pss 109:18), as we read of a curse entering into a house,
Zech 5:4. (7.) The woman must then drink the water (
Num 5:24); it is called
the bitter water, some think because they put wormwood in it to make it bitter, or rather because it caused the curse. Thus sin is called
an evil thing and a bitter for the same reason, because it
causeth the curse, Jer 2:19. If she had been guilty (and otherwise it did not cause the curse), she was made to know that though her stolen waters had been sweet, and her
bread eaten in secret pleasant, yet the end was
bitter as wormwood, Prov 9:17, and
Prov 5:4. Let all that meddle with forbidden pleasures know that they will be bitterness in the latter end. The Jews say that if, upon denouncing the curse, the woman was so terrified that she durst not drink the water, but confessed she was defiled, the priest flung down the water, and cast her offering among the ashes, and she was divorced without dowry: if she confessed not, and yet would not drink, they forced her to it; and, if she was ready to throw it up again, they hastened her away, that she might not pollute the holy place. (8.) Before she drank the water, the jealousy-offering was waved and offered upon the altar (
Num 5:25,
Num 5:26); a handful of it was burnt for a memorial, and the remainder of it eaten by the priest, unless the husband was a priest, and then it was scattered among the ashes. This offering in the midst of the transaction signified that the whole was an appeal to God, as a God that knows all things, and
from whom no secret is hid. (9.) All things being thus performed according to the law, they were to wait the issue. The water, with a little dust put into it, and the scrapings of a written parchment, had no natural tendency at all to do either good or hurt; but if God was thus appealed to in the way of an instituted ordinance, though otherwise the innocent might have continued under suspicion and the guilty undiscovered, yet God would so far own his own institution as that in a little time, by the miraculous operation of Providence, the innocency of the innocent should be cleared, and the sin of the guilty should find them out. [1.] If the suspected woman was really guilty, the water she drank would be poison to her (
Num 5:27), her belly would swell and her thigh rot by a vile disease for vile deserts, and she would
mourn at the last when her flesh and body were consumed, Prov 5:11. Bishop Patrick says, from some of the Jewish writers, that the effect of these waters appeared immediately, she grew pale, and her eyes ready to start out of her head. Dr. Lightfoot says that sometimes it appeared not for two or three years, but she bore no children, was sickly, languished, and rotted at last; it is probable that some indications appeared immediately. The rabbin say that the adulterer also died in the same day and hour that the adulteress did, and in the same manner too, that he belly swelled, and his secret parts rotted: a disease perhaps not much unlike that which in these latter ages the avenging hand of a righteous God has made the scourge of uncleanness, and with which whores and whoremongers infect, and plague, and ruin one another, since they escape punishment from men. The Jewish doctors add that the waters had this effect upon the adulteress only in case the husband had never offended in the same kind; but that, if he had at any time defiled the marriage-bed, God did not thus right him against his injurious wife; and that therefore in the latter and degenerate ages of the Jewish church, when uncleanness did abound, this way of trial was generally disused and laid aside; men, knowing their own crimes, were content not to know their wives' crimes. And to this perhaps may refer the threatening (
Hos 4:14),
I will not punish your spouses when they commit adultery, for you yourselves are separated with whores. [2.] If she were innocent, the water she drank would be physic to her:
She shall be free, and shall conceive seed, Num 5:28. The Jewish writers magnify the good effects of this water to the innocent woman, that, to recompense her for the wrong done to her by the suspicion, she should, after the drinking of these waters, be stronger and look better than ever; if she was sickly, she should become healthful, should bear a man-child, and have easy labour.
2. From the whole we may learn, (1.) That secret sins are known to God, and sometimes are strangely brought to light in this life; however, there is a day coming when God will, by Jesus Christ, as here by the priest, judge the
secrets of men according to the gospel, Roma 2:16. (2.) That, in particular,
Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge. The violation of conjugal faith and chastity is highly provoking to the God of heaven, and sooner or later it will be reckoned for. Though we have not now the waters of jealousy to be a sensible terror to the unclean, yet we have a word from God which ought to be as great a terror, that if
any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy, 1Cor 3:17. (3.) That God will find out some way or other to clear the innocency of the innocent, and to bring forth their righteousness as the light. (4.) That to
the pure all things are pure, but
to the defiled nothing is so,
Titus 1:15. The same word is to some a
savour of life unto life, to others a savour of death unto death, like those waters of jealousy, according as they receive it; the same providence is for good to some and for hurt to others,
Jer 24:5,
Jer 24:8,
Jer 24:9. And, whatsoever it is intended for, it
shall not return void.