Numbers 5: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD gives Moses three sets of instructions for the camp. First, anyone with a skin disease, a bodily discharge, or defilement from contact with a dead body is to be sent outside the camp, and Israel does it. Second, a person who wrongs someone else must confess, repay in full, and add a fifth, with the payment going to the priest if no relative of the wronged person is left to receive it. Third, when a husband suspects his wife of unfaithfulness but has no witness or proof, he brings her to the priest for a ritual in which she swears an oath and drinks bitter water that brings a curse if she is guilty and leaves her unharmed if she is not.

Claim by Claim

1. 5:1
   • The LORD spoke to Moses.
   • The LORD told Moses to say the following.
2. 5:2
   • The LORD commanded that the Israelites be ordered to send out of the camp everyone afflicted with the scaly skin disease.
   • They were to send out of the camp everyone who had a bodily discharge.
   • They were to send out of the camp everyone defiled by contact with a dead body.
3. 5:3
   • Both male and female were to be sent out.
   • They were to be sent outside the camp.
   • The purpose was that they not defile their camps.
   • The LORD said that he dwells in the midst of their camps.
4. 5:4
   • The Israelites did so.
   • The Israelites sent such people outside the camp.
   • The Israelites did just as the LORD had spoken to Moses.
5. 5:5
   • The LORD spoke to Moses.
   • The LORD told Moses to say the following.
6. 5:6
   • The LORD told Moses to speak to the Israelites.
   • The case is a man or a woman who commits any sin that people commit.
   • Such a sin is an act of unfaithfulness against the LORD.
   • That person is guilty.
7. 5:7
   • They must confess the sin they have committed.
   • The offender must restore the wrong in its full amount.
   • The offender must add a fifth of its value to it.
   • The offender must give it to the one he wronged.
8. 5:8
   • The case is that the wronged man has no kinsman-redeemer to whom the restitution can be made.
   • In that case the restitution belongs to the LORD.
   • The restitution is given to the priest.
   • This is in addition to the ram of atonement.
   • Atonement is made for the offender by that ram.
9. 5:9
   • Every contribution from all the holy things of the Israelites that they bring to the priest shall belong to that priest.
10. 5:10
    • Each man's holy things belong to him.
    • Whatever a man gives to the priest shall belong to the priest.
11. 5:11
    • The LORD spoke to Moses.
    • The LORD told Moses to say the following.
12. 5:12
    • The LORD told Moses to speak to the Israelites and say to them the following.
    • The case is any man whose wife goes astray.
    • The wife commits an act of unfaithfulness against her husband.
13. 5:13
    • A man lies with her sexually.
    • The act is hidden from her husband's eyes.
    • The act is kept concealed.
    • She has been defiled.
    • There is no witness against her.
    • She was not caught in the act.
14. 5:14
    • A spirit of jealousy comes over the husband.
    • He becomes jealous of his wife, and she has been defiled.
    • Alternatively a spirit of jealousy comes over him and he becomes jealous of his wife, and she has not been defiled.
15. 5:15
    • The man is to bring his wife to the priest.
    • He is to bring her offering on her behalf.
    • The offering is a tenth of an ephah of barley flour.
    • He must not pour oil on it.
    • He must not put frankincense on it.
    • The reason is that it is a grain offering of jealousy.
    • It is an offering of memorial that brings iniquity to remembrance.
16. 5:16
    • The priest is to bring her near.
    • The priest is to make her stand before the LORD.
17. 5:17
    • The priest is to take holy water in an earthenware vessel.
    • The priest is to take some of the dust on the floor of the tabernacle.
    • The priest is to put that dust into the water.
18. 5:18
    • The priest is to make the woman stand before the LORD.
    • The priest is to unbind the hair of the woman's head.
    • The priest is to place the offering of memorial in her hands.
    • That offering is the grain offering of jealousy.
    • The priest is to hold in his hand the bitter water that brings the curse.
19. 5:19
    • The priest is to put the woman under oath.
    • The priest is to say to the woman the following.
    • The condition is that no man has lain with her.
    • The condition is that she has not gone astray into uncleanness while under her husband.
    • In that case she is to be immune from this bitter water that brings the curse.
20. 5:20
    • The alternative condition is that she has gone astray while under her husband.
    • The alternative condition is that she has defiled herself.
    • The alternative condition is that a man other than her husband has lain with her.
21. 5:21
    • The priest is to make the woman swear with an oath of cursing.
    • The priest is to say to the woman the following.
    • May the LORD make her a curse among her people.
    • May the LORD make her an oath among her people.
    • This happens when the LORD makes her thigh fall away.
    • This happens when the LORD makes her belly swell.
22. 5:22
    • May this water that brings the curse enter her bowels.
    • May it make her belly swell.
    • May it make her thigh fall away.
    • The woman is to say, Amen, Amen.
23. 5:23
    • The priest is to write these curses in a scroll.
    • The priest is to wash them off into the bitter water.
24. 5:24
    • The priest is to make the woman drink the bitter water that brings the curse.
    • The water that brings the curse will enter into her and turn to bitterness.
25. 5:25
    • The priest is to take the grain offering of jealousy from the woman's hand.
    • The priest is to wave the offering before the LORD.
    • The priest is to bring it to the altar.
26. 5:26
    • The priest is to take a handful of the offering as its memorial portion.
    • The priest is to burn it on the altar.
    • Afterward the priest is to make the woman drink the water.
27. 5:27
    • The priest makes her drink the water.
    • The condition is that she has been defiled and has acted unfaithfully against her husband.
    • In that case the water that brings the curse will enter into her and turn to bitterness.
    • Her belly will swell.
    • Her thigh will fall away.
    • The woman will become a curse among her people.
28. 5:28
    • The alternative condition is that the woman has not been defiled and is clean.
    • In that case she will be free of harm.
    • In that case she will conceive offspring.
29. 5:29
    • This is the law of jealousy.
    • It applies when a wife goes astray while under her husband and is defiled.
30. 5:30
    • It also applies when a spirit of jealousy comes over a man and he becomes jealous of his wife.
    • He is to set the woman before the LORD.
    • The priest is to carry out for her all of this law.
31. 5:31
    • The man will be free from iniquity.
    • That woman shall bear her iniquity.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

5:1

Where the King James prints LORD in capital letters it stands for the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew consonants usually written YHWH. Jewish readers avoided saying that name aloud and substituted the ordinary word for 'Lord', and English translations have followed the custom ever since.

5:2

"Unclean" here is a ritual status, not dirtiness and not sin. Certain conditions (skin disease, bodily discharges, contact with a corpse) put a person temporarily outside the sphere of the sanctuary until the condition passed and the prescribed washings were done. The King James "leper" translates a Hebrew word covering a range of scaly skin conditions, not the disease now called leprosy (Hansen's disease).

5:3

The camp was laid out with the tent of worship at the center and the tribes arranged around it. "Outside the camp" therefore means away from the sanctuary at the middle, not exile from the nation; people returned once they were clean again.

5:6

The King James "trespass against the LORD" translates a Hebrew word for a breach of trust, the kind of act that violates something sacred. The point of the verse is that cheating another person was treated as an offense against God as well, not only a private wrong.

5:7

Adding a fifth means paying back the value of what was taken plus a twenty per cent penalty on top of it. The same rule appears in Leviticus 6:1-5.

5:8

In Israelite law the wronged party's nearest relative, the King James "kinsman", had the standing to receive what was owed, take up his lawsuits, and act on his behalf. This verse covers the case where the victim has died and no such relative survives. The "ram of atonement" is a sacrifice separate from the repayment: money settled the debt to the person, the ram settled the offense against God.

5:9

Priests received no farmland of their own. Portions of what worshipers brought to the sanctuary were their livelihood, which is what this verse is establishing.

5:10

A man chose for himself what he would give. Once he handed it over, it was the priest's to keep.

5:12

Married people promise to belong only to each other. To be untrue means breaking that promise.

5:13

'Taken with the manner' is an old legal phrase meaning caught in the act. The whole procedure that follows exists precisely because there is no evidence and no witness. Israelite law normally required two witnesses to convict anyone, so without them an ordinary trial was impossible.

5:14

A 'spirit of jealousy' here means a fit or mood of suspicion that takes hold of the husband, not a supernatural being. The law deliberately spells out both possibilities in the same sentence, the wife who has been unfaithful and the wife who has not, because the husband himself cannot tell which case he is in.

5:15

A tenth of an ephah is roughly two quarts, about a day's grain ration for one person. Barley was the cheaper grain; ordinary grain offerings used wheat flour with olive oil and frankincense added (Leviticus 2). Leaving out the oil and incense marked this offering as one brought under suspicion rather than in celebration.

5:16

"Before the LORD" means at the entrance of the tent of worship, the place where legal matters were settled in God's presence.

5:17

"Holy water" appears nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible; it most likely means water from the basin used by the priests at the sanctuary. Adding dust from the sanctuary floor put something of the holy place itself into what the woman would drink.

5:18

Loosening or uncovering a woman's bound hair in public was a mark of shame and disorder, the same gesture used in mourning. It signaled that her ordinary standing was suspended while the case was decided.

5:19

The oath is worded so that the woman calls the outcome down on herself. Ancient Near Eastern law used ordeals like this where evidence was impossible to obtain; here the verdict is left to God rather than to a court, and unusually, an innocent woman is publicly cleared by it.

5:21

To "become a curse" among your people means your name gets used in the wording of curses, "may God do to you what he did to her." "Thigh" is a standard Hebrew euphemism for the sexual and reproductive organs. What exactly the swelling and wasting describe is not stated: readers have understood it as miscarriage, as permanent infertility, or as a wasting illness, and the Hebrew does not settle it.

5:22

"Amen" means "it is firm" or "let it be so." Saying it twice is the formal way of accepting an oath and its consequences as binding on yourself.

5:23

Ink in the ancient world was carbon-based and water-soluble. Washing the written curses into the water was a way of putting the words themselves into what she drank, so that she swallowed the oath she had just agreed to.

5:25

Waving an offering was a formal gesture of presenting it to God, lifting and moving it toward the altar and back, before any of it was burned or given to the priest.

5:26

Only a token handful of a grain offering was burned; that portion, called the memorial, stood for the whole, and the rest went to the priests as food.

5:28

The Hebrew reads literally "she shall be sown with seed." It may mean she is cleared and free to resume normal married life, or that she will bear children; both senses are present in the phrase.

5:31

"Bear her iniquity" is a legal phrase meaning to carry the consequences of one's own guilt rather than having someone else answer for it. The first half of the verse settles the husband's position: a man who brought his wife through this procedure incurred no penalty for a false accusation, even if she was cleared.