Numbers 5

The LORD spoke to Moses and said, “Command the Israelites to send out of the camp everyone with a skin disease, everyone with a discharge, and everyone unclean through contact with a dead body. You must send out both male and female. You must send them outside the camp, so that they do not defile the camps of those among whom I dwell.” The Israelites did so and sent them outside the camp. As the LORD had spoken to Moses, so the Israelites did. The LORD spoke to Moses and said, “Speak to the Israelites. When a man or woman commits any of the sins people commit, acting unfaithfully against the LORD, that person is guilty. They shall confess the sin they have committed. The guilty person shall restore the full amount owed, add twenty percent to it, and give it to the one he has wronged. If the man has no redeeming relative to whom restitution may be made, the restitution made to the LORD shall belong to the priest, besides the ram of atonement with which atonement is made for the guilty person. Every raised offering from all the sacred gifts that the Israelites present to the priest shall belong to him. Each man's sacred things shall be his; what a man gives to the priest shall belong to the priest.” The LORD spoke to Moses and said, “Speak to the Israelites and tell them, ‘If any man's wife goes astray and acts unfaithfully against him, and a man lies with her with an emission of semen, and it is hidden from her husband's eyes, and she has defiled herself in secret, with no witness against her and without her being caught; if a spirit of jealousy comes over him and he is jealous of his wife when she has defiled herself, or if a spirit of jealousy comes over him and he is jealous of his wife when she has not defiled herself, then the man shall bring his wife to the priest and bring her offering on her behalf: about two quarts of barley flour. He must not pour oil on it or put frankincense on it, for it is a grain offering of jealousy, a grain offering of remembrance that brings iniquity to mind. The priest shall bring her near and have her stand before the LORD. The priest shall take holy water in an earthenware vessel. The priest shall also take some of the dust on the floor of the tabernacle and put it into the water. The priest shall have the woman stand before the LORD, loosen the woman's hair, and put the grain offering of remembrance into her hands; it is the grain offering of jealousy. In the priest's hand shall be the bitter water that brings a curse. The priest shall put her under oath and say to the woman, “If no man has lain with you, and if you have not gone astray into uncleanness while married to your husband, be free from this bitter water that brings a curse. But if you have gone astray while married to your husband, if you have defiled yourself, and a man other than your husband has had intercourse with you—” then the priest shall put the woman under an oath of cursing, and the priest shall say to the woman, “May the LORD make you a curse and an oath among your people, when the LORD makes your thigh waste away and your belly swell. May this water that brings a curse enter your inward parts, making your belly swell and your thigh waste away.” And the woman shall say, “Amen, amen.” The priest shall write these curses on a scroll and wash them off into the bitter water. He shall make the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and the water that brings a curse shall enter her and cause bitterness. The priest shall take the grain offering of jealousy from the woman's hand, wave the offering before the LORD, and bring it to the altar. The priest shall take a handful from the grain offering as its memorial portion and turn it into smoke on the altar. Afterward he shall make the woman drink the water. When he has made her drink the water, if she has defiled herself and acted unfaithfully against her husband, the water that brings a curse shall enter her and cause bitterness. Her belly shall swell, her thigh shall waste away, and the woman shall become a curse among her people. But if the woman has not defiled herself and is clean, she shall be free and shall conceive offspring. This is the law of jealousy: when a wife goes astray while married to her husband and defiles herself, or when a spirit of jealousy comes over a man and he is jealous of his wife, he shall have the woman stand before the LORD, and the priest shall carry out this whole law for her. The man shall be free from iniquity, but that woman shall bear her iniquity.’”

Rights and attribution