Jan 10, 2012 -- 1:46AM, Ed2 wrote:

Jan 9, 2012 -- 9:07PM, Ed2 wrote:

Jan 8, 2012 -- 10:38PM, Svetlana wrote:

Jan 8, 2012 -- 9:40PM, Kemmer wrote:

Numbers 5:11-22

¹¹ Then the LORD said to Moses, ¹² “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘If a man’s wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him ¹³ so that another man has sexual relations with her, and this is hidden from her husband and her impurity is undetected (since there is no witness against her and she has not been caught in the act), ¹⁴ and if feelings of jealousy come over her husband and he suspects his wife and she is impure—or if he is jealous and suspects her even though she is not impure— ¹⁵ then he is to take his wife to the priest. He must also take an offering of a tenth of an ephah^c]">[c]of barley flour on her behalf. He must not pour olive oil on it or put incense on it, because it is a grain offering for jealousy, a reminder-offering to draw attention to wrongdoing.

¹⁶ “‘The priest shall bring her and have her stand before the LORD. ¹⁷ Then he shall take some holy water in a clay jar and put some dust from the tabernacle floor into the water. ¹⁸ After the priest has had the woman stand before the LORD, he shall loosen her hair and place in her hands the reminder-offering, the grain offering for jealousy, while he himself holds the bitter water that brings a curse. ¹⁹ Then the priest shall put the woman under oath and say to her, “If no other man has had sexual relations with you and you have not gone astray and become impure while married to your husband, may this bitter water that brings a curse not harm you. ²⁰ But if you have gone astray while married to your husband and you have made yourself impure by having sexual relations with a man other than your husband”— ²¹ here the priest is to put the woman under this curse—“may the LORD cause you to become a curse^d]">[d] among your people when he makes your womb miscarry and your abdomen swell. ²² May this water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen swells or your womb miscarries.”

   “‘Then the woman is to say, “Amen. So be it.”

Typical bible.  Kill/curse an adulteress, but as for the man, "boys will be boys".

...and absolute, irrefutable proof that it is NOT to be taken as anything more than the flawed understanding of racist, misogynistic men.  That's what it IS, but the word of God can still be found in it.  You just have to wade through the cultural crap to find it, you can't take the cultural crap (all hatefulness is crap, and there ain't no love at all in these passages) literally and call it law.

Every last bit of injustice is evil and hated by God.  To call every misogynistic or racist law "just" is to insult God, and may even be blasphemy.

Yes, but that would mean that 2 Timothy 3:16 isn't true and that Jehovah's Witnesses' belief in 2 Timothy 3:16 as being true, which would include Numbers 5:11-22, isn't true either.

Bump for Newtonian and other JWs...for I would like to hear how they explain the righteousness of Numbers 5:11-22.

community.beliefnet.com/go/thread/view/4...

By the way, this was actually a very loving arrangement for any innocent woman who we being falsely accused.  If you've ever been accused or had someone suspect you of wrong when you are quite innocent, you would understand.

This gave the innocent woman a way to clear herself of any stain of suspicion.   I imagine only a truly caring God could come up with such an excellent solution to unfounded jealousy.

  If a man was suspicious of his wife, but there were no witnesses to any wrongdoing and she wasn't confessing (if guilty) this provided him a way to have her tried.  Basically, he calls upon Jehovah as the only available 'witness' to the crime.  And if she were innocent, it was clear, if she was guilty she was stricken with a wasting away of her sexual organs.

In the 17th century, God was more direct and had assistance in his judgement.  A suspected woman was tied to a chair and flung into a pond.  If she sank and drowned, she was guilty, but if she floated to the surface she was innocent and God saved her.  Lot's of guilty women, I suspect.

After all, divorce was shameful for a man, and this little ceremony avoided the opprobrium of divorce if he had his eye on a chick in the next village.

Hmmm. Well, I was just wondering if there was a similar stipulation in the Law for men who were suspected of cheating on their wives where the men's testicles fell off if it turned out that they were guilty.

Not bloody likely!

Since the law was equal for both sexes if there was proof of adultery, men and women were both liable to execution, we might just assume that in general women were too busy and too sensible to unjustly charge unfaithfulness.  Seeing a weakness in Israelite men toward this, Jehovah made provision.

Jan 11, 2012 -- 6:17AM, Goodtobehomestill wrote:

Since the law was equal for both sexes if there was proof of adultery, men and women were both liable to execution, we might just assume that in general women were too busy and too sensible to unjustly charge unfaithfulness.  Seeing a weakness in Israelite men toward this, Jehovah made provision.

That's a nice way to rationalize it.... or we can clearly see the mysogynistic way in which women were treated at that time.  Like Theo said, women were property.

Kinda makes you glad you live in the modern day and age, huh?