🔢WEB · Numbers 5:29
What does Numbers 5:29 mean?
"“‘This is the law of jealousy, when a wife, being under her husband, goes astray, and is defiled;"
— Numbers 5:29 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
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;
or when the spirit of jealousy comes on a man, and he is jealous of his wife; then he shall set the woman before Yahweh, and the priest shall execute on her all this law.
The man shall be free from iniquity, and that woman shall bear her iniquity.’”
Explanation
Numbers 5:29 functions as a summary statement that closes out a longer legal procedure found in Numbers 5:11-31, often called "the law of jealousy" or "the trial for adultery." In plain language, this verse simply restates the situation the whole passage has been addressing: a married woman, under her husband's authority, has strayed from faithfulness and become ritually and morally defiled through unfaithfulness. The verse itself doesn't describe the ritual test but rather labels and recaps what has just been detailed, marking it as an official body of law given by God through Moses.
The context is essential here. This law appears within the book of Numbers, written by Moses for the Israelites during their wilderness journey after the Exodus, as part of a larger set of purity and community regulations
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