Numbers chapter 5

After reading chapter 5:

*Yahweh tells Moses that anyone, male or female, with a skin disease, a discharge, or who has come in contact with a dead body, must be sent outside the camp so they don't "defile" it. Supposedly, the Israelites did that.

*Next, Yahweh tells Moses that any one who has wronged another person, or God, must confess and make equal restitution plus a fifth. If there is no one to give the restitution to, it is to be given to the priest, along with a ram for atonement. Everything given to the priest belongs to the priest, another job benefit.

*Verses 11-29 is one of the most disturbing passages I have come upon so far. It is how to test to see if a wife is unfaithful, not because there reason to believe she is, but because the husband is feeling  jealous.

-First the husband is to take the wife to the priest, along with an offering of barley flour for jealousy.  Who wants to bet that the woman had no choice in this matter?

-The priest will make the woman stand before the lord. Presumably this means in front of the tabernacle.

-The priest will put holy water in a clay jar. There is no explanation of where he got the holy water and what makes it holy compared to regular water. Then, get this, he will scoop up dirt from the tabernacle floor and put it in the water.

-Then the priest will loosen the woman's hair, and make her hold the barley flour offering. (Humiliation?) While she is doing that, he says a magical oath over the pitcher of dirty water: If the woman has been faithful to her husband, may the bitter water not harm her; BUT if she has been unfaithful, may she be under a curse that causes her abdomen to swell and any child she is carrying to be miscarried. How's that for the sanctity of life in the womb?

-The woman is required to say, "Amen, so be it."

-The priest then writes the above curses on a scroll and washes the curses off the scroll into the water in the pitcher.  One wonders what the ink was made from.

-Next, the priest takes the grain offering, waves it in front of the lord, and burns a handful of it. After that, he makes the woman drink the " bitter," cursed, dirty water. Again, do you think she had a choice?

-If the woman was not unfaithful, nothing would happen to her. She would be declared clean and would be able to have children. If she was unfaithful, her abdomen would swell, her womb would miscarry, and she would become a bitter curse. This would be proof of her guilt.  Of course it would have nothing to do with the filthy poisoned water she was given. How many times do you think a woman would have been proven faithful using this method? (What happened to the woman after she was proved "guilty" of adultery?)

-No matter what the result, the husband would not be considered guilty of any wrong doing. One wonders what the test for an unfaithful husband was, or if there even was one.