Trial by ordeal is a judicial practice that predicates guilt or innocence on the ability of the accused to survive a potentially-injurious task unscathed. If the accused survives the task or if she survives the task uninjured, she is declared innocent. On the other hand, if she either dies or suffers irreversible injury, she is considered guilty. Trial by ordeal often took the form of trial by water or trial by fire. The accused had a milestone tied around her neck and she was cast into a river. If she sank and died, the trial by water would determine her guilt. If she floated, she was considered innocent. In trial by fire, the accused walked a distance over burning coals. Three days later her wounds were examined. If there was substantial healing, it was thought that God had intervened to establish her innocence.
Trial by ordeal is one of the more primitive justice determination systems in human jurisprudence. It assumes supernatural intervention in order to circumvent the obviously injurious nature of the ordeal. In the case of the Sotah, the Bible incorporates a misogynistic intervention to determine the guilt or the innocence of a woman presumed to have committed adultery.
Numbers 5:11-31 prescribes a primitive trial by ordeal. The ordeal begins as follows:
5:12 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man's wife go aside, and commit a trespass against him, 5:13 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; 5:14 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.
Death by stoning was the prescribed punishment for adultery in ancient Israel; however, two to three witnesses were required to establish the guilt of an adulterer (Deuteronomy 19:15). This passage qualifies the ensuing ordeal with the following qualifications:
- A woman has presumably committed adultery against her husband.
- No witnesses are available.
- The “spirit of jealousy” comes upon the husband though there are no corroborating witnesses.
The trial continues with preliminary priestly preparations which climax into the following imperatives:
21 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; 5:22 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. 5:23 And the priest shall write these curses in a book, and he shall blot them out with the bitter water: 5:24 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.
The woman suspected of adultery is hence made to imbibe this potentially injurious water under oath before the priest and before the Temple numen. Prior to the above, the priest removes the woman’s head covering and/or dishevels her hair—adding to the humiliation of the event.
The outcome of the ordeal is prescribed as follows:
5:27 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. 5:28 And if the woman be not defiled, but be clean; then she shall be free, and shall conceive seed.
The outcome of this ordeal is the litmus for the secret culpability of the adulteress. Her sin is made clear through how her body responds to the soured water. Apparently, the secret adulteress undergoes a process of internal organ failure which will result in her infertility. Nearly contemporary with the Numbers 5 trial by ordeal is a Hittite military oath text that prescribes a similar curse. The text, CTH 427 is preserved on two cuneiform shards. It prescribes a series of three curses that will befall the traitor that abandons allegiance to the military. The last of these curses is narrated with a figurine of a person suffering from an abdominal condition called ascites on display. The oath takers are “told that should they break their word, their bellies should swell with water, and the deities of the oath should eat their offspring (seed) within their bellies” (Wiki, “Hittite Military Oath”).
Nothing prevents the Pentateuchal husband from submitting his wife to such a trial by ordeal. The text presumes the innocence of the husband and the guilt of the wife (5:31), but there are no limits to its application other than the occurrence of a "spirit (rush) of jealousy." Note that nothing is prescribed for the woman that suspects her husband to be guilty of adultery. Furthermore, the male partner who slept with the suspected wife is not made to undergo any sort of trial. He gets away without further consideration. It is noteworthy that adultery for a woman in the Pentateuch is much more generalized than it is for a man. In order for adultery to occur, a married woman must sleep with any man. However, adultery is not committed with a married man sleeps with unmarried women. The marital status of the woman is the determinant of adultery in the Pentateuch.
This passage is regressive. It mandates a trial by ordeal—an outdated and inadequate means to justice. Furthermore, it subjects the suspected wife to harm. It is an example of backward, regressive morality in the Bible, and it would be prudent for the believer to contemplate the nature of a God who would prescribe the same.