Code by Fab
To prevent fornication.
Fornication
I used the Aramaic spelling as found in the Peshitta (Aramaic NT) and noticed
the second shortest skip distance of this term could be extended to "to
prevent fornication". Upon checking the surrounding text I also found a
new term running just parallel to the key code and in the opposite direction
saying "bitterness of the woman!", this is interesting since most
of the letters of the main term are found in Numbers 5:11-31, a passage dealing
with the law concerning the solemn trial of a wife whose husband is jealous
of her because he has some reasons to suspect she has committed adultery with
another man and the mean used to find out the truth is the "bitter water
that causes the curse" (cf Nb 5:19).
Commentary by Matthew Henry on this passage:
Ver. 11. thru Ver. 31.
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, #Nu 5:12-14. 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, #Pr 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, #Pr 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 (#Pr 6:34), and that it is cruel as the grave,
#So 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 (#Le 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, #1Co 13:5. It is the happiness of the virtuous woman
that the heart of her husband does safely trust in her, #Pr 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 #Joh 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, #Eze 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, #Nu 5:19-22. He must assure her that,
if she were innocent, the water would do her no harm, #Nu 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, #Nu 5:21,22. To this she must say, Amen, as Israel must do to the
curses pronounced on mount Ebal, #De 27:15-26. 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 or parchment, verbatim—word
for word, as he had expressed it, and then to wipe or scrape out what he had
written into the water (#Nu 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 #Ps 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 (#Ps 109:18), as we read of a curse
entering into a house, #Zec 5:4.
(7.) The woman must then drink the water (#Nu 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, #Pr 9:17; Nu 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 (#Nu 5:25,26); 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 (#Nu 5:18), 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, #Pr 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 his 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 (#Ho 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, #Nu 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,
#Ro 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, #1Co 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,
#Tit 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 24:5,8,9. And, whatsoever it is intended for, it shall not return void.
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