Numbers 5

celebrating the Passover (9:1–14), numbering the soldiers (chap. 1), organizing the tribes (chap. 2), and assigning the priestly duties (chaps. 3—4).

When Mohandas K. Gandhi was the spiritual leader of India, a missionary asked him what he thought was the biggest obstacle to Christian missions in India, and Gandhi replied, “Christians.”

We may not like his answer, but we do have to face the fact that too often God’s people get in the way of God’s work. This is no better illustrated than in the book of Numbers where we see Israel repeatedly disobeying God and suffering for it. This explains why the Lord laid down some plain and practical rules for daily life in the camp of Israel. Israel was God’s chosen people, separated from the other nations, and God wanted them to be different in the way they lived. What kind of people did the Lord want them to be?

God’s glorious presence dwelt in the camp of Israel (v. 3; Ex. 29:45), and therefore the camp had to be pure and holy in His sight. “I will walk among you and be your God, and you shall be My people,” was His promise (Lev. 26: nkjv), and with that gracious promise came the solemn responsibility: “You shall be holy, for I am holy” (Lev. 11:44–45).

The concepts of “clean” and “unclean” were vital to daily life in Israel. Cleanliness involved much more than personal hygiene; it involved being acceptable to God in what they ate, what they wore, and how they conducted themselves at home and in public. The Israelites were in the infancy of their faith, and God used familiar pictures to teach them spiritual truth. He compared sin to disease and defilement and holiness to health and cleanliness (Lev. 11—15). Unclean people were put out of the camp until they had met the ceremonial requirements for reentry.

The word “defiled” is used nine times in Numbers 5, and three kinds of defilement are described.

Physical defilement (vv. 1–4). Scholars aren’t agreed on what leprosy was in ancient days, and some modern translations prefer “infectious skin disease.” Whatever it was, leprosy was a dreaded disease that made the victims ceremonially unclean. They had to live outside the camp, and if anybody approached them, they had to cry out, “Unclean, unclean!” (See Lev. 13.) If they were cured, they had to go through a lengthy process of cleansing before being admitted back into the camp (Lev. 14).

The second defiled group was made up of people from whose bodies fluid was being discharged (see Lev. 15). The discharge might be natural (vv. 16–18, 25–30) or unnatural (vv. 1–15, 19–24), but it still made the people unclean. Some of these discharges might be caused by venereal diseases or other infections which would make the people toxic, so isolating them helped to maintain the health of the camp.

The third group was composed of people who had touched a dead body, whether human or animal. The law concerning defilement by the dead is spelled out in Numbers 19:11–22 and Leviticus 21:1–4. The decayed carcass of an animal was likely to be contaminated and therefore able to spread disease, but even human corpses were considered unclean. Those who prepared their loved ones for burial were ceremonially unclean for a week and had to go through ritual cleansing before being received back into the camp.

Although health and hygiene were involved in these laws, their basic purpose was to teach the Jews the meaning of separation and holiness. Israel was to be a clean people and this was accomplished by obeying God’s Word in every area of life. God’s people today need to take this to heart: “Let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Cor. 7:1).

When our Lord ministered on earth, He ignored the laws of uncleanness and touched lepers (Luke 5:12–15), people with issues touched Him (8:43–48), and He even touched the dead (7:11–17; 8:49–56). The touch of the Great Physician brought healing to the victims but didn’t defile the Son of God. It was only when He died on the cross that He bore our defilement and the awful “disease” of our sin (1 Peter 2:24; Isa. 53:4–6).

Interpersonal defilement (vv. 5–10). The person who committed a trespass against another had to confess it and make restitution. (See Lev. 6:1–7; 7:1–10.) It wasn’t enough just to confess the sin, say, “I’m sorry,” and then bring a trespass offering to the priest. The offender had to pay the injured party (or a relative, or the priest) an amount of money equivalent to the loss incurred and add to it another 20 percent. In this way, the Lord taught His people that sin is costly and hurts people, and that true repentance demands honest restitution.

But another factor was involved. Israel was about to confront their enemies, and there could be no unity in the army if the people were in conflict with one another because of unresolved offenses. The soldiers would be alienated from each other and from the Lord, and that could lead to defeat. True unity begins with everybody being right with God and with each other.

Marital defilement (vv. 11–31). Faithfulness in marriage is a foundation stone for every society, for as goes the home, so goes the nation. In Israel, adultery not only defiled the people involved but also the land itself, and it was a sin detestable to God (Lev. 18:20, 24–29). Adultery was a capital offense. If proved guilty, both the adulterer and the adulteress were stoned to death (Deut. 22:22–24).

Suppose a husband suspected that his wife had been unfaithful to him but he didn’t have witnesses to prove it? What could he do? If his suspicions were wrong, the longer his feelings smoldered, the more damage they would do to him, his wife, and their family. If his suspicions were correct, would her sin introduce spurious issue—or even disease—into his family? To help solve this dilemma, the Lord instituted this test.

Let's look at the procedure first and then consider the issues that are involved in the test.

First, the husband brought his wife to the priest at the door of the tabernacle, along with the prescribed offering (Num. 5:15–16). This test was a public event that others could see and hear. There the priest presented her to the Lord, because God alone was the Judge in this case (vv. 15–16; Lev. 5:1–13). The phrase, “before the Lord,” is found four times in this passage (Num. 5:16, 18, 25, 30), and the name of the Lord is mentioned twice in the oath (v. 21). The offering was the humblest possible gift, the kind a poor person would bring, and it was presented without oil and frankincense. The couple stood before the Lord as the poorest of the poor.

Second, the priest took water from the laver and dust from the tabernacle floor and mixed them in a clay vessel (v. 17). Perhaps the dust was a reminder of man’s humble origin (Gen. 2:7) as well as his ultimate destiny—death (Ps. 22:15). Third, the priest loosened the woman’s hair, letting the tresses fall as if she were in mourning (Num. 5:18). A woman’s hair is her glory and covering, and in this act, she was presenting her glory to the Lord and hiding nothing from Him (1 Cor. 11:15). At the same time, the priest put the offering into her hands.

Fourth, the priest put the wife under oath before God (Num. 5:19) and then announced the curses attached to the oath (vv. 20–22). She submitted to God’s righteous judgment by saying, “Amen, amen,” which means, “Let it be so.” Fifth, the priest then wrote the curses on a scroll and washed them off into the bitter water (v. 23). Sixth, the woman then drank the water (v. 24). The word “bitter,” used five times in the passage (vv. 18–19, 23–24), doesn’t refer to the taste of the water but the effects in her body. If she was guilty, God would send her bitter suffering.

Seventh, as the woman drank the water, the priest took the offering from her hands and presented it to the Lord. If the woman was indeed guilty, the results would prove it. If she conceived, the baby would miscarry, or she would become barren for the rest of her life. She would feel in her body the terrible consequences of her sins and live with those consequences until the day of her death. Of course, for a Jewish wife to be childless was a tragedy, for her most important task in life was to give her husband heirs and maintain his name in Israel (Gen. 30:1–2; Ruth 4:14).

Now let’s consider some of the issues involved in this ceremony. There’s no record in Scripture that any husband ever used it or that any accused wife asked for it. Perhaps the very existence of this law proved a barrier to adultery and a warning that sin would be found out. There are clearly some built-in “roadblocks” that would make a husband hesitate to rush to the priest and ask for his wife to be tried.

To begin with, it was a public event, performed at the door of the tabernacle, and the whole camp could know about it. Would a husband want to expose his marital problems that openly, especially when he couldn’t know the results of the trial?

Furthermore, what transpired there told something about the husband as well as about the wife. If the husband loved his wife and was deeply hurt by her possible infidelity, why would he want to expose her publicly? But if he didn’t love her and only wanted to hurt her, he might be embarrassed and proved wrong. A wise man would think twice before having his wife judged this way.

The husband would have to live with the consequences. If his suspicions were proved wrong, he owed his wife an apology and had to work at rebuilding the relationship. (Why wasn’t he punished in some way for false accusation?) If she was found guilty, he had to live with her, wonder who her lover was, and suffer with the physical consequences of the curse and her bad reputation. She could never bear him children, but he still had to provide for her and for any children she gave him before committing her sin.

There are many perplexing questions associated with this ritual, but let’s not miss the major message: God wants purity in marriage, and husbands and wives can’t escape the bitter consequences of marital unfaithfulness. God can forgive adultery (John 8:1–11), and husbands and wives can make new beginnings in the Lord. However, adultery hurts everybody, and it’s sometimes difficult to live with the consequences of forgiven sin.