Numbers 5:11

“And the Lord spake unto Moses, etc.] At the same time, and delivered to him a new law: saying; as follows.”

“The trial of jealousy. Since the crime of adultery is especially defiling and destructive of the very foundations of social order, the whole subject is dealt with at a length proportionate to its importance. The process prescribed has lately been strikingly illustrated from an Egyptian “romance,” which refers to the time of Rameses the Great, and may therefore well serve to illustrate the manners and customs of the Mosaic times. This mode of trial, like several other ordinances, was adopted by Moses from existing and probably very ancient and widely spread institutions. Numbers 5:15 The offering was to be of the cheapest and coarsest kind, barley (compare 2 Kings 7:1, 2 Kings 7:16, 2 Kings…”

“5:11-31 This detailed test for adultery, a “trial by ordeal,” is the only such case found in the Old Testament, though trial by ordeal was a common procedure in the ancient Near East. God had a special interest in safeguarding marriage as the foundation of Hebrew society, and the purpose of this ordeal was to promote marital faithfulness. We cannot determine how commonly such ordeals actually occurred. This procedure appealed to God’s own intervention to ensure justice in cases lacking evidence (cp. 1 Cor 5:5).”

“Sentence of God upon Wives Suspected of Adultery. - As any suspicion cherished by a man against his wife, that she either is or has been guilty of adultery, whether well-founded or not, is sufficient to shake the marriage connection to its very roots, and to undermine, along with marriage, the foundation of the civil commonwealth, it was of the greatest importance to guard against this moral evil, which was so utterly irreconcilable with the holiness of the people of God, by appointing a process in harmony with the spirit of the theocratical law, and adapted to bring to light the guilt or innocence of any wife who had fallen into such suspicion, and at the same time to warn fickle wives…”