Numbers 5:31 –
The husband will be innocent of any guilt in this matter, but his wife will be held accountable for her sin.
Interesting they go through this long procedure before the priest to determine if a husbands jealousy is justified yet there is nothing before or after if the woman is jealous. If you read the entire chapter there is a ritual for determining if the jealously is justified. It starts with a woman committing adultery and there being no witnesses. My question is what about the other party in this act? Are they not witnesses or did they “sin” also no matter their marital status?
My first question is why doesn’t God make this “easy” for us today to determine guilt? We have seen time and again people who appear guilty get off because of a good lawyer. It would be so much easier if the judge could hand this over to God and it be settled in a short time. Imagine the savings alone in lengthy court battles and we would have no more jury duty! Now if you think about this the procedure is for someone who suspects infidelity, not for someone who was caught in the act or with “blood on their hands.”
One other thing I find interesting is there is no procedure listed for a woman’s jealousy. So does this mean a man’s actions are held to a different standard? Or is it implied that this will apply in both cases? Unfortunately you see this often where a man is rarely the focus on infidelity. John 8 starts with a story about an adulterous woman about to be stones and Jesus addresses her accusers. He writes something in the sand and none of the accounts mention what he wrote. Think about it the woman was caught IN THE ACT and they were about to stone her to death, I believe the writing said “what about the man”.
That story ties into this law so well, the man seems to get a free ride, so to speak, when it comes to adulterous affairs. My belief there is an implied connection between the woman’s rights, yet the interpretation does not out rightly state this to be true. Now, I would love to go into the original scriptures to determine the actual context. When you get into the mire of the details of the Law it gets ugly, but it wouldn’t be a necessary if we just followed the Ten Commandments!