Numbers: Faith, Law, and History

The Trial of Jealousy

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Trial of Jealousy

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Track: 08

Dictation Name: RR181D8

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Year:

Let us worship God. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before His presence with singing. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise. We thankful unto Him and bless His name, for the Lord is good. His mercy is everlasting and His truth endureth to all generations. Let us pray.

Our Father, we thank thee that thou hast chosen to dwell with us, thy people, that by thy grace, thou hast made us a new creation, hast set us apart for thy holy purpose, and has called us to be a people of victory. Make us ever joyful in thee and in thy word, ever faithful in thy service, and ever confident in the triumph of thy kingdom. In Christ’s name. Amen.

Our scripture is Numbers 5:11-31. The Trial of Jealousy. Numbers 5:11-31. “And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man's wife go aside, and commit a trespass against him, and a man lie with her carnally, and it be hid from the eyes of her husband, and be kept close, and she be defiled, and there be no witness against her, neither she be taken with the manner; and the spirit of jealousy come upon him, and he be jealous of his wife, and she be defiled: or if the spirit of jealousy come upon him, and he be jealous of his wife, and she be not defiled: then shall the man bring his wife unto the priest, and he shall bring her offering for her, the tenth part of an ephah of barley meal; he shall pour no oil upon it, nor put frankincense thereon; for it is an offering of jealousy, an offering of memorial, bringing iniquity to remembrance. And the priest shall bring her near, and set her before the Lord: and the priest shall take holy water in an earthen vessel; and of the dust that is in the floor of the tabernacle the priest shall take, and put it into the water: and the priest shall set the woman before the Lord, and uncover the woman's head, and put the offering of memorial in her hands, which is the jealousy offering: and the priest shall have in his hand the bitter water that causeth the curse: and the priest shall charge her by an oath, and say unto the woman, If no man have lain with thee, and if thou hast not gone aside to uncleanness with another instead of thy husband, be thou free from this bitter water that causeth the curse: but if thou hast gone aside to another instead of thy husband, and if thou be defiled, and some man have lain with thee beside thine husband: then the priest shall charge the woman with an oath of cursing, and the priest shall say unto the woman, The Lord make thee a curse and an oath among thy people, when the Lord doth make thy thigh to rot, and thy belly to swell; and this water that causeth the curse shall go into thy bowels, to make thy belly to swell, and thy thigh to rot: And the woman shall say, Amen, amen.

And the priest shall write these curses in a book, and he shall blot them out with the bitter water: and he shall cause the woman to drink the bitter water that causeth the curse: and the water that causeth the curse shall enter into her, and become bitter. Then the priest shall take the jealousy offering out of the woman's hand, and shall wave the offering before the Lord, and offer it upon the altar: and the priest shall take an handful of the offering, even the memorial thereof, and burn it upon the altar, and afterward shall cause the woman to drink the water. And when he hath made her to drink the water, then it shall come to pass, that, if she be defiled, and have done trespass against her husband, that the water that causeth the curse shall enter into her, and become bitter, and her belly shall swell, and her thigh shall rot: and the woman shall be a curse among her people. And if the woman be not defiled, but be clean; then she shall be free, and shall conceive seed. This is the law of jealousies, when a wife goeth aside to another instead of her husband, and is defiled; or when the spirit of jealousy cometh upon him, and he be jealous over his wife, and shall set the woman before the Lord, and the priest shall execute upon her all this law. Then shall the man be guiltless from iniquity, and this woman shall bear her iniquity.”

This is an extremely important text. It is one that I have written about twice in the past. It is one that a whole book could be written about with regard to its influence in western history. It is a law, but it is much more than a law. It is different from all other laws in the Bible. It is also a very much misunderstood text. Humanists call it an example of a primitive trial by ordeal, and even biblical commentators have described it with the same term. In reality, it is the antithesis of a trial by ordeal. It is a condemnation of such trial.

The ordeal was a trial common in all parts of the world and it still persists in some areas. It continued in Europe till the thirteenth century. This passage, this text, had a great deal to do with its final abolition. It was very, very important in ancient Germanic cultures, and the Germanic tribes continued its use long after their conversion. It was carried by them into England and widely used there. Because of this importation of the ideal into Christendom, the ordeal was cloaked in Christian language, but its premises were radically pagan. If the ordeal were a dual, it was believed that the man on the right would win. It was very often a kind of tournament, and the loser was held to be guilty.

In the water ordeal, the suspected man was cast into the water, and if the waters received him, if he sank, then he was innocent. Of course, if he survived that, which was not unlikely, he was then free.

The whole point of this was, and fire and water ordeals were common, because both were important aspects of nature, and were regarded in terms of ancient science as basic elements, the church was able to curtail ordeals by forbidding, in 1215, any clergy to participate or to be present as part of the ordeal court. Trial by battle took a longer time to abolish.

Now the basic premise of the trial by ordeal was the goodness of nature, it was a part of nature worship. Jean Jacques Rousseau revived the essentials of this faith with his philosophy. The source of justice was not from a god beyond nature, but from powers within, inside nature according to the ordeal. The appeal of the ordeal was to the essential justice of nature, whereas, as Christians, we believe that nature and man are both fallen. This faith had a revival though, and with the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, became very powerful. Alexander Pope’s statement, “Whatever is, is right,” still had connected with it moral premises, a belief that nature was somehow similar to what the Bible said about God, but when you have this premise of Pope, “Whatever is, is right,” in the mouth of Lenny Bruce, you have the premise of the sexual revolution and much more.

Well, this was the faith of the trial by ordeal. It was a turning away from God to nature for truth and justice. Not some god beyond the world, but nature is the source of truth and justice, and such trials were a logical part of all non-Christian religions.

The trial of jealousy given to us here in Numbers was the direct opposite of the ordeal. No judgment was expected from nature, because the natural order and all men included, is a fallen realm, because creation is under a curse. It is not nor can it be normative. It cannot be the source of justice, it is fallen, and because man is also fallen. In fact, is the cause of the fall. He is not normative. He cannot be the source of the law. Instead of a trial by ordeal, which means a trial by nature, there must be rather a trial by God and by God’s law. So, the trial of jealousy was given as a radical contradiction and negation of the ordeal. It was used to abolish the ordeal, but we live in a dangerous time, because people no longer understand the meaning of these verses, and we are returning to a belief that nature is normative.

The whole premise, for example, of the Kinsey Report, and many like things, is that nature is normative, and therefore, whether is be child molestation or homosexuality, or anything else, because it happens in nature, it is normative. So, this is a very important fact. It was used to do battle against the standard of nature as the source of law, and man as the source of law, and because we do not understand this law now, we are in trouble, and we are drifting into all kinds of paganism.

The facts about this kind of trial tell us something. Such a trial was resorted to only when suspicion, rather than evidence, existed. A man might rightly or wrongly suspect his wife of adultery. What was at stake was the legitimacy of the children. Would the heir be the man child’s or someone else’s? Hebrew records indicate that such a trial was not casually resorted to. Two possibilities were obviously involved. Either the wife was guilty and the suspicion was valid, or the husband was wrongly suspicious and the woman was innocent. The couple had to appear at the sanctuary. The woman bore in her hands an offering, provided by the husband, barley mean, which was a cereal offering and it was used as a sin offering. The woman’s hair was to be unbound and allowed to hang loosely instead of being braided. In a sense, she was being unmade because the suspicion had hurt her status. Such a trial could not be entered into lightly. The priest then charged the woman with an oath to which her response was, “Amen, amen.” This was to indicate total assent to the proceedings and to the will of God.

The woman then was to drink was to be called the bitter water, not because it had any taste, but because the trial was a bitter fact for her. Holy water had been taken and placed in an earthen vessel, and a little dust from the floor of the temple or the tabernacle mixed into it. From the naturalistic perspective, this was, therefore, a harmless drink. No serious consequences, if any, should follow naturally. If, however, the woman were guilty, the water would cause her belly to swell into a false pregnancy, her thigh to rot, and sterility to ensue. If she were innocent, no consequences would follow. The woman was acquitted, and we are told, and shall conceive seed.

In the offering prescribed for this trial, oil and Franken since, which represent the Holy Spirit and joy, were barred. It is God’s providential intervention which establishes the guilt. There is nothing natural about it. There is no way in which this harmless water could cause the dire physical consequences to the woman. It is not man nor nature whose law or verdict prevail, but God. This trial makes a mockery of the trial by ordeal. It tells us justice has one source; God. Therefore, man must not look to man nor to nature for law and justice. Rather, he must look to God alone. This kind of trial lasted for centuries, but had disappeared a century or two before Christ’s time.

In verse 23, we are told that at the beginning, the data concerning such a trial had to be recorded immediately by the priest, specifically, the curse is recorded and then washed into the water of the testing. If she were innocent, the water became an instrument of blessing. She shall conceive and have children. The humiliation of this trial was turned into a blessing, and she was accorded honor as a mother in the covenant family. The vindication of the woman, if no consequences followed at once, was also the indictment of the husband for false suspicion.

The trial was also a vindication of God as the source of justice, as against nature and man. This law stands alone in the entire body of laws in the Bible. Other laws, many of them, leave the judgment to God’s providential activities in history, or His judgments beyond history. This law states that, in a particular case, God intervened directly to render judgment in a way that contradicts all trials by ordeal, all trust in the natural order, and the natural justice of nature. Such a trust was slowly won during the medieval era from nature to God. The ordeal was banned from legal practice, and it was a long battle on the part of the church.

But at the same time, philosophers, with the revival of Aristotle, began to restate the trust in nature in more sophisticated forms. The Renaissance and then the Enlightenment once again enthroned nature and nature’s law. Romanticism with Jean Jacques Rousseau, furthered this exaltation of nature as against God. We still have this faith in the form of environmentalism, animal rights, and like movements. It is interesting that some things published of late point out that the ecology movement had its origin in the German scientist, Haeckel, who perpetrated a number of frauds which are still in the textbook, although they’ve been demonstrated again and again to be frauds. Frauds designed to supposedly prove evolution. He was also the father of the whole ecology movement. He coined the very word, and the greatest proponents of any country in the world of ecology were the Nazi’s. Blood and soil, that was the creed of the ecology movement.

But within Romanticism, and with the idea of nature as the source of law, another development took place. The Marques de Sade accepted the sovereignty and normative character of nature, but he stripped it of all its pseudo-Christian content. Alexander Pope, in his essay on man, declared, “Remember, Man, `the Universal Cause//Acts not by partial but by gen'ral laws,'//And makes what Happiness we justly call//Subsist not in the good of one, but all.//There's not a blessing individuals find,//But some way leans and hearkens to the kind;//No bandit fierce, no tyrant mad with pride,//No cavern'd hermit, rests self-satisfied;//Who most to shun or hate mankind pretend,//Seek an admirer, or would fix a friend.//Abstract what others feel, what others think,//All pleasures sicken, and all glories sink://Each has his share; and who would more obtain,//Shall find the pleasure pays not half the pain.//Order is Heav'n's first law.”

Well, for Pope, man’s happiness rests on the good of all, and nature, he held, gives us all personal fulfillment as we work in harmony with her and our fellow men. If we work contrary to this, “All pleasures sicken, and all glories sink,” because he said, “Order is Heav’n’s first law,” and by heaven, Pope meant a Deistic heaven and the whole realm of nature, but Sade continued this worship of nature, but denied the pseudo-Christian veneer of morality ascribed to nature. His view of an anti-moral nature read in tooth and claw turned Rousseau’s views upside down, and they were the forerunners of theories of aggression in Darwin, Nietzsche, and Freud. For Sade, cruelty, perverse sexuality, and evil mark nature, and force, not love, not brotherhood, is the law of the universe, the highest pagan truth.

Modern thinkers have been heavily influenced by Sade. The idea of nature as normative has given way to nature as totally permissive. This faith was promulgated, as I said, by the Kinsey Reports. It found expression in the sexual revolution, homosexual rights groups, the abortion movement, transsexual operations, and so on. For many, in this chaos of the new view of nature, man or the state supplant nature. The results have been anarchism on the one hand and statism on the other, and a major movement has taken a different turn. Now, some believe that both God and nature are to be supplanted by art, and the artist becomes the new priest, and the art gallery the new church.

As against all this stands the witness of the trial of jealousy. It tells us that man and nature are fallen. It tells us that only God can be the source of justice, of righteousness, or law, and of truth, and God’s law is man’s only recourse against injustice, and God can and does intervene in the affairs of man, and in the natural realm to further his purpose and justice. We must never forget that the God of scripture is closer to us than we are to ourselves, and our times are always in His hands. There is never a moment when His providential hand is not with us and upon us, and it is not man nor nature that ordains things, but God. Out of Him come all things. Out of His holy purpose all things are done, and although we cannot see the conclusion when we are caught up in the event, we must always know that it is God, not man, that prevails. God, not the world of nature. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we thank thee that thou art the source of all good. Take away from us the trust in men, or states, or nature, or anything other than thy word, thy person, thine only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Teach us to walk day by day in total faithfulness to Him, and give us the victory, by thy providential care, over the powers of darkness. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen. Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] You mentioned that the Nazis were ecology-driven. It seems that the ecology movement in the United States has become somewhat fascist in their approach to furthering their agenda, and since the Green Party in Germany is also ecology-driven, do you{?} seeds of another Fascist Nazi movement is buried in the Green Party in Germany?

[Rushdoony] Yes. And here as well. Because the essence of Fascism is that it is a form of socialism, it’s called National Socialism. But more, it’s socialism by controls. It maintains the façade of private property while totally controlling everything in a society, and the essence of what we are drifting into steadily is National Socialism, or Fascism, and the father, as I’ve said before, on more than one occasion, of this century’s political thinking is really Mussolini. What we’re having in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union now is a drift into a façade of freedom, but fascism, and it’s no improvement. It’s a monstrous evil, and this is what this text speaks against; the trust in nature, because now, these movements, whether it’s the ecology movement or anything else, say that we’re going to take our law from nature. Nature is normative, and we’ve got to preserve nature because it is their god, so they’re going to bow down and worship it, and preserve it in an unnatural way. Yes?

[Audience] We still have trials by ordeal.

[Rushdoony] Yes, we do in many parts of the world, and I would say we’re moving progressively towards that in this country, and the press is deeply involved in that sort of thing. Yes?

[Audience] One of the modern day trials by ordeal is trying to get a building permit.

[Rushdoony] Yes, I can heartily agree with that. Yes?

[Audience] What was the significance of the dust from the tabernacle floor that was put into the water?

[Rushdoony] We don’t know, but it was just a little harmless dust, just a pinch of it. But there was nothing about it that could cause any problem. Some have said it’s bringing the holy and the ordinary together, but no one really knows. Yes?

[Audience] In another context, wasn’t there a penalty to the man who falsely accused his wife of infidelity? I notice here there’s no penalty.

[Rushdoony] Yes, it’s probable that there was the penalty applied and it was no divorce unless there were actual guilt, ever. He was severely penalized for false suspicions. Yes?

[Audience] Verse 18, “and the priest shall set the woman before the Lord, and uncover the woman's head.” Why uncovered? And it means that before the woman was covered? And why uncovered?

[Rushdoony] She was uncovered and her hair let down, because what the husband had done by the suspicion was to, in a sense, bring shame upon her, and after it was over, of course, her head was covered, and she bound it up again and the shame was transferred to her husband for the false accusation. You see, the covering over the head was a sign of honor, of power.

[Audience] Wasn’t it also a sign that she was under her husband? And now she was not under her husband. She was standing there as a woman {?} repudiated her.

[Rushdoony] If you did not hear what Dorothy observed, the covering was a sign of being under the authority of her husband, and by his accusation, she no longer had that protection, that care. So, the conclusion, of course, meant that her hair could be braided and bound and covered, because she was again under protection, this time from God. Our time is about over, so let us bow our heads in prayer.

Our Father, we thank thee for thy word. We thank thee that, as we face all the evils, accusations, and trials of this world, we know that thy word and thy saving power negates all these things, that in the end, every sin shall be uncovered and judged, and thy kingdom and thy people stand vindicated and triumphant. How great and marvelous thou art, O Lord, and we praise thee. And now, go in peace. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.

End of tape.