Women on Trial (Numbers 5) – A More Christlike Reading – Brad Jersak

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A MORE CHRISTLIKE READING OF NUMBERS 5 –

QUESTION:

Many things still trouble me in the Old Testament. For instance, the treatment of women under the law, such as we see described in Numbers 5. I would like to be able to hear your perspective on that passage.

RESPONSE:

This is such an important question that I decided to do a deep dive on Numbers 5:11-31. Without presuming to claim an answer, I will do my best to respond.

My first instinct was to compare the passage across several translations, with special attention to Jewish translations, including the Septuagint (LXX), Philo of Alexandria, Robert Alter’s The Hebrew Bible, and the Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh Translation (2nd ed.). Their study notes then cite sources from the Mishnah (the written version of the oral law) and Talmud (rabbinic discussions on the Mishnah). I will draw thoughts from those sources, which I found very helpful. 

I then searched for early church commentaries (using catenabible.com, notes in the LXX used in the Orthodox Study Bible, and in the church fathers used in the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. I was surprised to find nothing at all referencing Numbers 5 in those works. Not a word. Apparently, they knew the saying, “If you can’t find something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

With the data I was able to gather, here is how I thought through the passage. 

First, what does it say? 

Often, “trigger passages” or “toxic texts” cause such an immediate revulsion that we are tempted to react in one of two ways—both represented in the modern world. Some rush to an ‘apologetic’ for the text, based in biblicism, that seeks an interpretation that smooths over the biblical, theological, or in this case, moral difficulties in Scripture. Of these, some practice a type of “divine command theory,” which says, “If the Bible says it, then God said it. And since the Bible is infallible and inerrant, I will accept what it says as true and good, or I will interpret it in a way that makes it alright.”

The opposite reaction is to take offence at the text and quickly dismiss it without a close reading of what it says, what it might mean, and what we ought to do with it… in this case, our first instinct might be to tear the page from our Bibles or even expel God from our lives because one or both seem obviously wicked. In that case, we forget how the passage might be an important cautionary tale, warning us of what not to do as we make the same missteps today. 

I am opting for a third way: let’s read the passage carefully and honestly enough to review what Numbers 5 says before drawing a conclusion. Just the facts first. To distill the text to its basic instructions, Numbers 5 begins, “The Lord spoke to Moses, saying…” So, the author attributes this law as a word from God through Moses. And the problem God addresses first is a jealous husband who suspects his wife has committed adultery but has no proof. The law is deemed necessary because whether she’s guilty or not, “a spirit of jealousy may come over him.” The passage assumes her claim to innocence. But since they didn’t have nanny-cams or paternity tests to verify or falsify her claims, how can we know if she is innocent?

Trial by Ordeal

Thus, as Alter notes below, we have the only example in the Bible of a “trial by ordeal.” A trial by ordeal was an ancient trial where guilt or innocence was determined by subjecting the accused to a dangerous or painful test, often involving water, in the belief that the gods would render the verdict. If the accused survived the test, they were normally acquitted, and if not, they would stand (or sink) condemned, usually to death. 

For example, in the Code of Hammurabi 132 (18th century BC, which the OT laws seem to borrow!), one way to test the guilt or innocence of a suspected adulteress was the “river ordeal.” The accused woman was thrown into the river and her fate was left to the river god—sink or swim. Good swimmers were innocent. Those who drowned were guilty (i.e., dead).

Sadly, beginning in the Middle Ages (from the 10th century on) and extending all the way to England in the 17th century (AD!) witch trials, “Christian” inquisitors concocted verdicts through much uglier ordeals. A suspected witch would be bound and thrown into the river. If she sank and drowned, she was considered innocent. But if she floated, she was accused of magic and proclaimed guilty, then executed, often by being burned at the stake. It was a lose-lose outcome of death in any case… and in God’s name! 

Now, back to Numbers 5 … this trial by ordeal does not appear intrinsically life-threatening. As best I can tell, the man would bring a “jealousy offering” of grain to the priest. And the priest would write out a curse on a parchment to the effect that, “If this woman has committed adultery, let her tummy bloat, her thighs sag, and her womb be barren.” The woman would uncover her head [Philo: as a sign of laying bear the soul] agree with an oath (“Amen, amen”) and then drink a concoction of “bitter water.” The recipe contained holy water, some dust and perhaps ashes from the tabernacle floor, and some ink from the written curse. If she exhibited none of the cursed symptoms in the aftermath, she was declared innocent—no harm, no foul—nor did the husband suffer any penalty for falsely accusing her. If the wife did exhibit symptoms, the curse seems to have been its own punishment (or did they also stone her under the law?). 

The one upside to this humiliating ordeal is that unlike Hammurabi’s trial (where innocence depended on your swimming skills) or the English witch trials (where you died no matter what), it seems as if the ingredients in the “bitter water” would not produce the symptoms of guilt without divine intervention or some toxic microbe in the dust. 

Historical Use? 

Having read what the Law supposedly commands, Jewish commentators pose serious questions. They debate over when this law was written, why it was written, and if it was ever enforced. 

For example, according to the Mishnah, the practice was suspended after the second temple was destroyed in 70AD. It speculates that it was suspended partly because of the uncontrollable number of cases of adultery! But of course, how would the Jews have even practiced the ordeal when there was no more temple and no surviving priesthood to apply the law as prescribed? One might imagine a rabbi attempting to fulfill the ordeal in a post-temple synagogue, but no such examples survive in Jewish memory.  

But Robert Alter goes further. He says that there is no way of knowing if it was ever practiced, but at the least, “It is doubtful whether this was a living legal institution in the Second Temple period [516 BC – 70 AD], and if the sanctuary setting of the ritual is the Tabernacle, it may even have not been observed in the First Temple period.”

He would have us bear in mind that this section of Numbers is generally regarded as composed by the Priestly writers of the 6th century BC, drawing together strands of earlier sources so that the final form of the text is written in retrospect and should not be read as literally as, “The Torah says it, so God said it, so it happened this way.” 

That is NOT to say that we simply dismiss what is written as spurious. Rather, we ought to honor the ways that Jewish scholars believe their own Scriptures were compiled, composed, and understood. That has implications for how they read their Bible (then and now) and how they used and use (past and present) such texts. Their work regularly demonstrates a diversity of interpretations that inform how I might read the Torah as a non-Jew. 

Philo’s Allegorical Reading & the Appetites of the Soul 

Most of our study so far engages a literal reading of the passage, specific to women and focused on an ordeal involving reproduction. Yet long ago, prior even to Christ’s teaching ministry, the Alexandrian rabbi, Philo, had already recognized that to avoid impugning the character of God and discarding the chapter altogether, he would need to read Numbers 5 allegorically. Here’s how he does it—I will highlight words that show his departure from misogynistic literalism to an allegorical exposition on the appetites of the soul.:

  • On this account, Moses says, with respect to the soul which is suspected of having committed adultery, that if having abandoned right reason, which is man living according to the law, it shall be found to have gone over to passion, which pollutes the soul, “it shall become swollen in the belly,” which means it [the soul] shall have all the pleasures and appetites of the belly unsatisfied and insatiable, and it [the soul] shall never cease to be greedy through ignorance, but pleasures in boundless number shall flow into it, and thus its passions shall be interminable. Now I know many people who have fallen into error in respect of the appetites of the belly, that while still devoting themselves to their gratifications, they have again rushed with eagerness to wine and other luxuries; for the appetites of the intemperate soul bear no analogy to the mass of the body. Some men like vessels made to hold a certain measure, desire nothing extravagant, but discard everything that is superfluous; But appetite, on the other hand, is never satisfied, but remains always in want and thirsty. In reference to which their expression, that “the thigh shall fall away,” is added an immediate connection with the denunciation that “her belly shall swell”; for then right reason, which has the seeds of originating principles of good, falls from the soul.
  • “If therefore,” says Moses, “she [the soul] has not been corrupted, then she shall be pure, and free from all infliction from generation to generation”; that is to say, if she [the soul] has not been polluted by passion, but has kept herself pure and respect of her legitimate husband, sound reason, her proper guide, she [the soul] shall have a productive and fertile soul, bearing the offspring of prudence and justice and all virtue (III.48-49).

Whether or not we resonate with Philo’s use of the passage, we can at least acknowledge that his approach delegitimizes a literal and sexist understanding of Numbers 5. “She” is the soul of any man or woman, and her “adultery” describes the inner cravings of any man or woman, the insatiable appetite of our unredeemed passions when they draw us away from our “husband,” which represents “sound reason” and makes us barren of the virtues of “prudence and justice.” The ordeal could then be described as the heart laid bare in the “tabernacle” of God’s presence, with the solemn invocation, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24).

Alter’s Critical Reading

Robert Alter’s critical assessment of this text may surprise some, but bear in mind that he is no cynical, dismissive “liberal” with no regard for the Bible. He is a living Jewish scholar, among the most respected biblical Hebrew translators alive. He is ranked at the top of experts in reading Scripture as narrative and always approaches the text with its ancient worldviews in mind.

That’s a long runway to these striking statements: 

  • This troubling and also fascinating ritual is the only clear-cut instance of trial by ordeal in the Bible. It became the basis for a whole tractate of the Talmud, Sotah (“the straying woman”), and with the concern for the status of women in recent scholarship, it has been the subject of voluminous discussion and debate. Apologetic approaches seem questionable. 

So, Alter acknowledges that our modern sensibilities (which can be suspect) and our moral compass (which is extremely important) play into how recent scholarship reads these verses with a cringe. The passage has our attention because it is, frankly, offensive. But where does that offense lie? Is God the problem? Or the ancient Jewish image of God? Or our post-modern images of God? Or is the problem the Bible itself and what it says about God? Or is the issue our hermeneutics: how we’re interpreting or misinterpreting it through cracked cultural lenses? 

Alter begins by rejecting the “apologetic” approaches that try to smooth out the problem, whether defending God or defending the Law or defending the Book or whatever. He believes we must NOT start with a defensive agenda that imposes Biblicist ideologies on the text. Rather, he makes a hard, honest look at the passage… akin to the way the biblical Prophets respond to the Law. In fact, let’s remember that Jesus said, “You have heard that it is said…, but I say to you” (as the Word of God!) and regarded some laws as concessions to or even expressions of our hardness of heart (Matthew 29:8). Alter continues,  

  • The ritual reflects the strong asymmetry of sexual roles in the biblical worldview: a woman must submit to this ordeal on the mere suspicion of her husband, and the question of the man suspected of adultery is not even raised in the legal system. 

The Law is “asymmetrical” in its treatment of men and women. That’s simply a fact in the text. There’s no escaping it. We could demonstrate this fact umpteen times over across the Torah, but this chapter suffices. Men are given advantages under the law that women do not enjoy, and women are accused and tried for suspicion of crimes that men are not. The problem, then, is that we are told “God is just” (if “justice” pertains to fair and equal treatment), but then we’re presented with laws from God that are overtly inequitable. 

Apart from an allegorical interpretation, our options are limited: again, either these laws (1) are just and righteous because God gave them, or (2) God is unjust because God gave them, or (3) these unjust laws do not reflect the heart of God but rather, express ancient views of marriage that ultimately reflect a particular human worldview (in God’s name). Isn’t it obvious to us that Numbers 5 aligns with neither (a) our God-given conscience nor (b) God’s heart revealed in Christ? 

This isn’t simply pushback from secular humanists or “Enlightenment” thinking. The Bible itself invites and demands each reader to bring their conscience to the text. The Jewish prophets model for us how to do so. And for Christians, we need to subordinate every alleged revelation to the person and gospel of Jesus Christ, where we learn there is no favoritism in God, neither male nor female in Christ (who IS the Image of God in whose image God created us—male and female).   

  • The ordeal, moreover, is based on a kind of archaic magic, however one seeks to square it with loftier versions of monotheism. … 

Second point: not only is the ordeal unjust with regard to gender, let’s be honest: it’s a magical incantation involving a curse (which, you’ll recall, Christ forbade). And not just a curse, but a curse against a woman’s reproductive organs to cut off her ability to bear children (the worst curse of all in that world). And while some have made up the obtuse claim of the importance of an undefiled male bloodline relating to inheritance, what can’t be denied is that what’s described here is a form of sorcery using temple priests, sacrifices, and sacred stuff—all questionable for Jews in any other context and, one would hope, always dubious to the Christian (except for literalists). 

Third point: Alter says, 

  • Our passage powerfully records an ideology of marital relations…

Can we doubt it? What was that ideology? What does history tell us about the roles and rights of married women through the ages? In every age, human cultures shift and develop (even through Scripture), including whole eras where women are subjugated, treated as chattel property to be passed from fathers to husbands, paid for with dowries, subservient to their men, and treated differently than husbands… in this case, legally so. On the other hand, we also find women in the Roman senate, leading house churches, sitting as monarchs, more liberated than we’d expect, so it’s not “one brush paints all.” 

Likewise, our ideals today around women and our definitions of marriage have changed dramatically, and they are radically diverse across cultures. Each of our many cultures, then, needs to grapple with the multiplicity of marriage ideals in the polyphony of cultures across biblical worldviews. That’s not so easy, but in Numbers 5, Alter makes the following bold (and I’d say prophetic) statement.

Alter’s Prophetic Reading

  • In any case, it is a vivid male fantasy of testing and exposing sexual “defilement” in a woman.

“A vivid male fantasy”!… apparently projected onto God through the law revealed to Moses. When you say it that way, it sounds like Alter is rejecting the claim that God gave this law. OR, as the prophet Ezekiel says, God deliberately gave them a bad law. No, truly… check out chapter 20: 

  •  23 Moreover, I swore to them in the wilderness that I would scatter them among the nations and disperse them through the countries, 24 because they had not executed my ordinances but had rejected my statutes and profaned my Sabbaths, and their eyes were set on their ancestors’ idols. 25 Moreover, I gave them statutes that were not good and ordinances by which they could not live. 26 I defiled them through their very gifts, in their offering up all their firstborn, in order that I might horrify them, so that they might know that I am the Lord.

That prophetic commentary on the Law only deepens the problem, perhaps enough so that we should say, “Look, when you read any outrageous statute given through Moses, God shows us through the prophets (and through Jesus) that we MUST pause and consider which laws are good and which are bad, and whether God ‘gave them’ as a judgment or not at all. As God says in Jeremiah 7:

  •  22 For in the day that I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt, I did NOT speak to them or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. 23 But this command I gave them, “Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; walk only in the way that I command you, so that it may be well with you.”   

Do you see how Jeremiah 7 even calls Numbers 5 into question? The plot thickens until our reading of Numbers 5 is SO fraught that a Christian approach must virtually start from scratch. How? Through the interpretation of our Rabbi, Jesus, reading the Law, the Psalms, the Prophets and ALL the Scriptures for how they are fulfilled in him (See Luke 22:27, 44).

A More Christlike Word

In A More Christlike Word: Reading Scripture the Emmaus Way, I describe how Melito of Sardis, a grand-disciple of John the Beloved, describes and demonstrates a Christian reading of the text. We finally arrive at a Christian reading of the text. I often use three principles for the toughest passages that treat the Scriptures as sacred signs pointing forward to their fulfillment in Jesus Christ. I’ll try to model that here.

First, John 10:10. Jesus is the Word of God—he is the last and only inerrant revelation of what God has to say about himself. Everything else is, by comparison, a “dim beholding” (1 Corinthians 13:12). So much so that John says, “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known” (John 1:18). Thus, in John 10:10, when Jesus says, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full,” Jesus is speaking FOR God, “who does not change like shifting shadows” (James 1:17), and he is speaking AS God, who does not change and is “the same yesterday, today and forever”(Hebrews 13:8). 

In light of God’s self-revelation in John 10:10, could the God who is life and love curse an adulterous woman to death? Or curse her womb to barrenness or miscarriages? I can find Scriptures in the Hebrew Bible that suggest as much if read literally, but Jesus, the Word of God, denies it. God is the life-giver, not a death-dealer. It is the thief who steals, kills, and destroys.

Second, I ask, “Then why does Numbers 5 say that Moses said that God gave them this law? My answer, attributed to Pete Enns, is that “God let his children tell the story.” And in the words of my friend Anna, “and they didn’t know Jesus yet.” This matters because the Jewish experience of God includes the human dignity and agency of telling it from their point of view—not from some abstracted eternal vantage point nor inside our post-modern ideals and ideologies. Numbers 5 is how they thought about God in their time and space (whether in the wilderness long ago or in exile much later). They write the story in retrospect as they recalled the oral tradition and faithfully recorded it. Their agenda was to issue a call to faithfulness before God as they perceived it… and they saw it this way before Christ revealed its spiritual or gospel sense. Now, it is OUR responsibility to see all Scripture the Jesus Way in collusion with the gospel and the Spirit.

Finally, we ask, “Where is Christ in this chapter?” This is where Mileto helps me immensely in his second-century book, On Pascha. I boil down his method this way:

  • Anywhere in the OT where you see God’s children suffering (an injustice, a defeat, or a death) anticipates the much greater injustice, suffering, and death that Christ underwent for the life of the world.
  • Anywhere in the OT where you see God’s children committing an injustice, a curse, or inflicting a death anticipates the much greater injustice, curse, and death-dealing perpetrated upon Christ in the conspiracy of his murder. 
  • And anywhere in the OT where you see God’s children achieving a great victory, however bloody or dubious, anticipates the much greater victory of Christ in his victory over Satan, sin, and death without the loss of any human life but his own. 

Do we see this in Numbers 5? I suggest we do, particularly in how injustice, oppression, enslavement, rape, or murder (whether via law, crimes, or conquests) are perpetrated against women in the OT. In every case of misogyny and abuse, Christ fulfills those texts by suffering in solidarity with ALL those women and AS those women through his indivisible union with them. We see this in incidents like John 8 (the woman “caught” or framed in adultery) so that while she is freed, the same crew picks up stones to kill Jesus by the end of the chapter. We see this again in Gethsemane and in Golgotha, where Christ bears the sins, sorrows, and traumas of ALL humanity in his own soul and body. And we see it in Matthew 25, where he says, “What you’ve done to the least of these, you’ve done to me.” 

Having read Numbers 5 closely with Christ as our rabbi, I now hear it in this way, as a word from God for our turbulent times: 

Nothing any woman suffers, especially under men who weaponize laws they attribute to God, goes unsuffered by God in Christ. Numbers 5 anticipates what Christ fulfills. The bitter waters imposed in every trial of accused woman are tasted by Christ in the bitter gall offered him at the Cross (Matthew 27:34). Now listen carefully: he refused to drink it, so they can too.  

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