🔢WEB · Numbers 5:26
What does Numbers 5:26 mean?
"The priest shall take a handful of the meal offering, as its memorial, and burn it on the altar, and afterward shall make the woman drink the water."
— Numbers 5:26 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
“‘The priest shall write these curses in a book, and he shall blot them out into the water of bitterness.
He shall make the woman drink the water of bitterness that causes the curse; and the water that causes the curse shall enter into her and become bitter.
The priest shall take the meal offering of jealousy out of the woman’s hand, and shall wave the meal offering before Yahweh, and bring it to the altar.
The priest shall take a handful of the meal offering, as its memorial, and burn it on the altar, and afterward shall make the woman drink the water.
When he has made her drink the water, then it shall happen, if she is defiled, and has committed a trespass against her husband, that the water that causes the curse will enter into her and become bitter, and her body will swell, and her thigh will fall away: and the woman will be a curse among her people.
If the woman isn’t defiled, but is clean; then she shall be free, and shall conceive offspring.
“‘This is the law of jealousy, when a wife, being under her husband, goes astray, and is defiled;
Explanation
Numbers 5:26 comes from the middle of a ritual described in Numbers 5:11-31, often called the "test for an unfaithful wife" or the ordeal of the bitter water. In plain language, this verse describes one step in that ritual: the priest takes a handful of a grain offering (the "meal offering") that the accused woman has brought, burns that handful on the altar as a symbolic token before God, and then gives the woman the specially prepared water to drink — a mixture of holy water and dust from the tabernacle floor, into which the words of a curse had been dissolved.
To understand the context, this law was given to Moses for the Israelites during their wilderness journey, addressed to a husband who suspected his wife of adultery but had no witnesses or proof. Rather than allowing suspicion to fester or letting the husband take justice into his own hands, the law required the case to be brought before a priest, who would mediate the matter through a formal, God-directed procedure. The woman would stand before the Lord, the priest would prepare the offering and the water, and then the drinking of the water would supposedly bring divine judgment — if she were guilty, the text says she would suffer physical affliction; if innocent, she would be unharmed and even blessed with fertility (verses 27-28).
Theologically, this passage reveals a few important things. First, it shows that in ancient Israel, matters of hidden sin and suspicion were to be brought before God rather than settled by human vengeance or unproven accusation — the ritual placed the outcome entirely in the Lord's hands, not the hus
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