Thoughts on Numbers 5

Today’s reading: Numbers 5; Mark 13

Numbers 5 is weird.

The chapter starts off innocently enough, instructing them to remove unclean people from the camp. And it is worth mentioning, to be clear, that this was not kicking them out of Israel, but was moving them to the perimeter of the camp. You can think of the camp like a target with gradations of holiness. The tabernacle, at the center of the camp, was the bullseye (and even within the bullseye you had gradations of holiness as you went further into the tabernacle), then you had the Levites camped around the tabernacle, then, outside of the Levites, the rest of Israel camped, and outside the camp was outside of Yahweh’s domain. Yahweh’s domain is order, cleanliness, and holiness, so sin, defilement, and uncleanness belong out past the border of His domain. So removing someone who was unclean from the camp was not sending them away to wander aimlessly alone in the wilderness, it was to have them camping at the perimeter of the camp so that they were not defiling Yahweh’s domain.

But then we get into the weird part with a woman whose husband is jealous bringing her to the priest who makes her drink bitter water that may or may not cause her body to swell and make her barren, and it honestly just seems really weird. It also seems a little messed up that a husband can subject his wife to this for no reason other than deciding he feels jealous all of the sudden, even if there is literally no evidence that she went out on him. So I want to talk about those things this morning.

I want to start with the weirdness first, and to get at the weirdness, we have to ask why it seems so weird. From my perspective at least, this looks a lot like the kind of sorcery or divination that ancient or animistic cultures practiced, and which Yahweh bans the Israelites from pursuing. It also stands out to me because this is the only thing I can really think of like this. A lot of the rest of Israelite worship seems a lot more “modern” in that it is stepping away from the ritualistic incantations and god-appeasing ceremonies of ancient religions, and, if I’m being honest, doesn’t feel all that supernatural. This one ceremony kind of breaks that mold and so feels out of place.

Overall, I have to say that ultimately, I think it is that last piece, the fact that this ceremony seems much more supernatural than the rest of Israelite worship, that makes it feel weird. This is highlighted by the fact that, if you look this up, commentators and scholars will try to make arguments about how this could have worked scientifically, like what in the mixture could have caused the pain/swelling, and if it was really up to the priest and how he prepared it based on whether he thought she was guilty. I really think trying to explain this one scientifically is a foolish endeavor.

My explanation for the weirdness of this ceremony ties into my thoughts on it seeming messed up in a patriarchal over-lord kind of way.

On the surface, this ceremony does seem very patriarchal. The husband can just decide he is feeling jealous and accuse his wife of adultery without any evidence and subject her to this, and she has no recourse. I would argue though that this is actually an incredibly important protection for the Israelite women.

Like it or not, Israel was a patriarchal culture. God did not pluck Israel out of a cultural vacuum and completely re-write their views and relationships into a perfectly sanctified and holy culture. Yahweh picked one nation to be His inheritance as an avenue through which He would redeem all the nations of the earth, and He does call them to be different from the nations around them, but He doesn’t supernaturally rewire their brains to just start thinking and acting differently. Instead, He works within their culture, changing and transforming it over time, but at the outset, it is a very messy, sinful, patriarchal culture just like all the other nations around them.

But here’s the thing, in a patriarchal system like that, the husband’s words are law for the family. So if the husband has a spirit of jealousy come over him and he decides that it must be because his wife went out on him, then his word is truth and she can be stoned, or at least divorced, for it even if there is no evidence. And if you think about the kind of threat this could be, hanging over a woman’s head, that if her husband gets angry about something, he could just make a claim and get rid of her or have her killed for false infidelity, that is just ripe for abuse.

We have to remember that the people of Israel were still just as sinful and messed up as the people around them. God didn’t call them to be His people because they were so good, He chose them because they were the ones He chose. So not only is Israel a very patriarchal culture at this time, but it is full of sinful husbands just like the nations around who were at times abusive and overbearing and would for sure use a threat like a claim of infidelity to keep their wife “in line.”

Given all that, this ceremony in Numbers 5 is actually an incredible protection for women in Israel. A husband has no authority to accuse his wife blindly of infidelity, not matter how jealous he feels. The most he can do is bring his wife to the priest who will perform this ceremony to ferret out the truth.

And this brings me to this ceremony feeling weird to our modern, naturalistic sensibilities. We want that scientific explanation for how this ceremony could have worked, or what it was trying to accomplish physically, but I think that is a dead end. The physical aspects of the ceremony are not the point, Yahweh’s involvement is. Even if we want to try to have naturalistic explanations for everything, naturalism is not the context for the Old Testament. This entire book is couched in Yahweh choosing a people for Himself from among the nations, supernaturally intervening in so many ways along the way, from building a nation from Abraham, to rescuing Israel from Egypt, to leading them through the wilderness to the point we are at now.

It seems like, for many Christians today, we easily accept that Yahweh stepped in at discrete moments in time to perform a miracle or two, but we tend to think of it as though everything in the world just meanders along with no spiritual influence or interference, and that this naturalism is only ever interrupted in the moments the Bible tells us God explicitly did something. But is that what the Bible says? Nope! In fact, the Bible tells us the exact opposite, that there are many spiritual forces, some for God and some against Him, constantly at work in and among the people of the world. In fact, during the wilderness wandering, when Numbers 5 takes place, the presence of Yahweh is leading Israel around the wilderness as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, so Israel was in a constant state of active, miraculous, divine intervention.

Bringing this back to Numbers 5 then, why would we assume that God is not actively superintending this ceremony every time it occurs? Why do we need this to work apart from supernatural intervention when it is given by an all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-present, and deeply loving God? And if God is superintending this ceremony each time and miraculously granting the proper outcome, what would be the result? On the one hand you could say this would make a woman think twice about cheating on her husband, and yeah, I guess it would, though I don't know how much of a concern that really was in this. On the other hand though, this is a serious check on the husband's authority and treatment of his wife. This fully removes the threat of baseless accusations of infidelity that could get his wife divorced or killed, and if Yahweh is, in fact, superintending this ceremony, then no innocent woman would ever have suffered at all under it.

So, in short, I think Numbers 5 strikes us as weird or uncomfortable because it feels too supernatural and too patriarchal. The reality is though that the entirety of Israel's history is supernatural, and just because we, in the modern world, want to explain everything away without the supernatural, Christianity literally cannot exist in the absence of a God who actively and lovingly intervenes in the physical world, so the supernatural aspect shouldn't be an issue. And while it seems patriarchal and like it is letting the husband accuse the wife whenever he wants, the reality is that, with God Himself giving the verdict, this is really doing the exact opposite and protecting the women from those baseless accusations expressly because God was speaking into and working within a patriarchal culture.