Numbers 5:1-6:21
Dear RTB’ers,
Two major topics today, separated into two chapters – the test for adultery and the Nazirite vow. The Nazirite vow is fairly straightforward – a man wishes to put himself under a vow in order to seek the Lord more fully. We have two New Testament occasions where Paul seems to be connected to this Nazirite vow, the first in which he seems to have put himself under the vow: At Cenchreae he had cut his hair, for he was under a vow. (Acts 18:18) In the second, he is responding to the Jerusalem leaders’ concerns that Jewish Christians are suspicious of Paul. On the following day Paul went in with us to James, and all the elders were present… And they said to him, “You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed. They are all zealous for the law, and they have been told about you that you teach all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or walk according to our customs… Do therefore what we tell you. We have four men who are under a vow; take these men and purify yourself along with them and pay their expenses, so that they may shave their heads. Thus all will know that there is nothing in what they have been told about you, but that you yourself also live in observance of the law.”… Then Paul took the men, and the next day he purified himself along with them and went into the temple, giving notice when the days of purification would be fulfilled and the offering presented for each one of them. (Acts 21:18-26, edited) So, the Nazirite vow…
As for the test of adultery… I suspect that many of us have some level of outrage at the way women are treated in this test. A man has a sense of jealousy, justified or unjustified, and his wife is brought forward, either innocent or guilty. There are no witnesses, except for her adulterous partner if she is guilty, and he is certainly remaining silent. So the “burden of proof” in testing this man’s jealousy lies with the physical “deformity” of the woman’s body if she is guilty or her “cleanliness” if she is innocent. So, your thoughts on this test of adultery…??
Blessings!
I am struck by Fred’s use of the word “outrage.” If that is an accurate word, what does that say about us and how we interpret Scripture?
Outrage…?? Probably not the correct word choice. I was looking for a word that expressed internal anger, but then I looked up “outrage” and it appears to be stronger than anger. I just finished reading a couple of Middle Ages historical fiction books. I found myself ?“troubled”? at how women were treated back then. I’m sure I could go further in history, even up to our 21st century and still be troubled at how women are treated. But no, God is God and I am not. He put forth His laws and His methods long before time began; who am I to question? Still my 21st-century mind looks back at Numbers 5 and wonders, “How is that fair?” But I know that God is not unfair. So, no matter how things look to me, both then and now, my prayer continues to be, “Your will be done.”
I think I’ll say something about the treatment of women here, but not from a Biblical perspective. I doubt that Jewish women were being treated any differently than women in any other culture in this time period. If a woman got pregnant outside of marriage, she has always been the one who “got in trouble” until approximately the last 30 years in western culture. I don’t know anything about middle eastern culture in 1300-1400 BC except a little about Egypt where in the ruling class some women had more influence —Hatshepsut as Pharoah, Nefertiti as wife of Pharoah Akehenaton are good examples of this. But the Hebrews were poor and lived in tents. Nobody had any privacy at all. Girls were probably married at puberty. Their husbands in general were probably not much older. People mostly died very young. Women routinely died in childbirth. If I understood the “test” for infidelity correctly in our passage today, it sounded like the woman was being asked to drink water with maybe dirt in it and if this made her miscarry than she had been “a bad girl.” From my modern Western perspective it doesn’t sound like that severe a punishment, unless there was some kind of poison in the water. And if she didn’t miscarry, maybe that reassured her husband and he would stop treating her in a possibly violent manner. Maybe then it would be possible to heal the relationship. So that’s my take on this passage.