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Home > Magazines > Bible Review > August 1996

A Husband’s Pride, A Mob’s Prejudice

The public ordeal undergone by a suspected adulteress in Numbers 5 was meant not to humiliate her but to protect her.

By Jacob Milgrom

Feminists have no difficulty pointing out obvious sexist passages in the Bible. In their arsenal of evidence they usually reserve the coup de grace for the case of the suspected adulteress (Numbers 5:11–51). These are the facts of the case: An irate husband suspects that his wife has been unfaithful. Having no proof, his only recourse is to bring her to the Sanctuary, where she undergoes an ordeal. The priest makes her drink a potion consisting of sacred water to which have been added dust from the Sanctuary floor and scrapings from a parchment containing a curse. The curse […]

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Endnotes

1.

H.C. Brichto, “The Case of the Sota and a Reconsideration of Biblical ‘Law,’” Hebrew Union College Annual 46 (1975), pp. 55–70.

2.

See Jacob Milgrom, “The Case of the Suspected Adulteress, Numbers 5:11–31: Redaction and Meaning,” in The Creation of Sacred Literature, ed. R.F. Friedman, (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1981) pp. 69–75; and Milgrom, Numbers, (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1990), pp. 346–354.