Numbers5chapter 5

Numbers 5:1-3

The Lord spake unto Moses opens fifty-one passages in Numbers, more than in any other book. Chapters 1 to 4 set the camp in rings around the tent, and the first ruling after them names who may not stand inside those rings, the leper of Leviticus 13:46, the man with an issue of Leviticus 15, and anyone defiled by a dead body. The ground given in verse 3 is the dwelling itself, in the midst whereof I dwell, so the rule follows from where God has pitched rather than from the diseases. Deuteronomy 23:14 gives the same reason for the same rule.

Numbers 5:4-5

Israel obeys, and the verse says so twice over, which matches the closing line of the census at Numbers 4:49. Compliance is recorded steadily from chapter 1 through chapter 10, and the record breaks at 11:1, where the people complain and fire falls among them. For the man defiled by a dead body this chapter gives removal and no cleansing, and the water of separation that answers that case waits until Numbers 19.

Numbers 5:6-7

Leviticus 6:1-5 had already set restitution for defrauding a neighbour at the principal with a fifth part added. What Numbers adds is confession said aloud, then they shall confess their sin, which Adam Clarke reads as the condition of any hope of mercy. The other addition is the wording, since a fraud worked on a neighbour is called a trespass against the Lord, and the money still goes to the man who was robbed rather than to the sanctuary.

Numbers 5:8

Kinsman occurs here for the first time in Scripture, and the word behind it is the redeemer's word. It stands behind Boaz at Ruth 3:12 and behind the avenger of blood at Numbers 35:12, so one term covers the man who buys back a relative's land and the man who pursues a relative's killer. The case in view is a wronged man with nobody left to be paid, and the debt is transferred rather than cancelled, unto the Lord, even to the priest. Adam Clarke passes on the Jewish reading that this covers a stranger in the camp, since an Israelite has kin somewhere among the tribes.

Numbers 5:9-11

The trespass paid to a priest sits beside the standing rule that what a man brings to a priest belongs to that priest. Albert Barnes reads verse 10 of the officiating priest, so the man doing the service that day receives what is given that day, and Matthew Henry reads the same line as pay following work. The priests held no land, which Numbers 18:20 states outright, so what came in at the tent was their living. Verse 11 opens a fresh word from the Lord, and the law that follows is the one ordeal in the Torah.

Numbers 5:12-14

The law is defined by what evidence cannot reach. Verse 13 stacks the conditions, hidden from her husband, kept close, no witness against her, and she was not taken in the act, which is exactly the case Leviticus 20:10 and Deuteronomy 22:22 cannot touch, since those laws require proof and carry death. Verse 14 then states the case twice, once where the wife is defiled and once where she is not, so the law is written for a husband whose suspicion may be wrong. Adam Clarke takes the spirit of jealousy as either an influence working on the man or the passion itself, and leaves the choice open.

Numbers 5:15

The meal offering of Leviticus 2:1-2 is fine flour with oil poured on it and frankincense laid on top. This one drops both, which it shares with the poor man's sin offering of Leviticus 5:11, the same tenth part of an ephah brought without oil and without frankincense. What belongs to this offering alone is the grain, since barley meal is brought nowhere else in the law. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the omission as fitting a sin offering brought by a woman under accusation, and the memorial that ordinarily rises as a sweet savour here brings iniquity to remembrance.

Numbers 5:16-18

Three things are put in place before a word is spoken. Holy water goes into an earthen vessel, a phrase that occurs nowhere else in Scripture, and dust off the tabernacle floor is put into it. The text gives no reason for the dust; Adam Clarke suggests the baseness of the crime, and John Gill reports the rabbinic measure of half a log and the ruling that the vessel had never been used before. Her head is uncovered in front of the sanctuary, which Clarke reads as a public degradation and connects with Paul's argument at 1 Corinthians 11:5-6.

Numbers 5:19-20

The oath is put to her in two halves and the acquittal comes first, be thou free from this bitter water that causeth the curse. Only after that does verse 20 state the guilty case, and it states it in a heap of synonyms, gone aside, defiled, and some man have lain with thee. John Gill reads the piling of terms as closing every evasion, since these are the words she is sworn to. The priest speaks and the woman listens, so nothing in the rite turns on her own words until verse 22.

Numbers 5:21-22

Amen enters Scripture here, in the mouth of a woman swearing to a curse laid on her own body, and she doubles it. The next place a whole nation says it is Deuteronomy 27:15-26, where Israel answers Amen to twelve curses called out from Ebal. The curse itself is given in the terms of verse 21, the thigh to rot and the belly to swell, and Adam Clarke draws on Jeremiah 29:22 to show what being made a curse and an oath among a people amounts to, a name other men use when they swear.

Numbers 5:23-24

The curses are written out and then washed off the page into the water she drinks, so the words go into her in their own ink. Adam Clarke reports the rabbinic view that the ink was mixed without any iron in it, which would let the writing lift clean off the parchment. Blot enters Scripture at Exodus 32:32-33, where Moses asks to be blotted out of God's book and God answers that he blots out the man who sinned, and here what gets blotted out is the curse. Matthew Henry holds that the water carried the curse only where there was guilt, since verse 24 has it becoming bitter after it enters her.

Numbers 5:25-26

The drinking is commanded at verse 24 and commanded again at verse 26, after the offering is waved and a handful of it burned. John Gill and Keil and Delitzsch read verse 24 as stating the outcome in advance, with verses 25 and 26 giving the order the priest actually follows, and the sequence of the rite has been read both ways. The handful burned for a memorial is the same action as Leviticus 2:2, performed here on an offering with nothing sweet in it.

Numbers 5:27-28

The vessel holds water, dust and dissolved ink, and nothing in it accounts for either outcome. The text names no mechanism and simply states the two results, one for the defiled woman and one for the clean, which leaves the verdict with God rather than with the priest or with a court. Adam Clarke sets aside the rabbinic idea that a bitter substance was added and takes bitter in the sense of affliction, while Matthew Henry passes on Bishop Patrick for an effect seen at once and John Lightfoot for one that took years. Verse 28 gives the clean woman more than an acquittal, she shall be free, and shall conceive seed.

Numbers 5:29-31

Adam Clarke calls this the most singular law in the Pentateuch and notes that trials of the same shape were used among many nations, where an accused person was put to fire, poison or water and the god was expected to decide. What Israel's version leaves out is the hazard, since the woman swallows water, dust and ink, and no trial of this kind is prescribed anywhere else in the law. Verse 31 clears the husband of guilt for bringing the case, while Deuteronomy 22:13-19 fines a husband a hundred shekels and bars him from ever divorcing the wife he slandered, so the two laws stand side by side in the canon and neither cancels the other.