ADULTERY, TRIAL OF trral ov) (1) Water of Jealousy. It would be unjust to the spirit of the Mosaical legislation to suppose that the trial of the suspected wife by the hitter water, called the Water of Jealousy, was by it first pro duced. It is to be regarded as an attempt to miti• gate the evils of, and to bring tinder legal control, an old custom which could not be entirely abro gated. The original usage, which it was designed to mitigate, was probably of the kind which we still find in Western Africa: and a comparison of the two may suggest the real points of the evil which the law of Moses was designed to rectify, and the real advantages which it was calculated to secure. The matter deserves particular at tention, inasmuch as it relates to the only ordeal in use among the Israelites, or sanctioned by their law.
(2) Trial by Red Water. The illustrative details of the Trial by Red Water, as it is called, vary among different nations, in minute particu lars, which it would be tiresome to distinguish. The substantial facts may be embodied in one statement : (3) Differences. The ordeal is, in some tribes, confined to the case of adultery, but in others it is used in all cases. Differences, rather.than resemb lances, must indicate the particular points in which the Mosaical law, while retaining the form, aban doned the substance and obviated the evils of this institution. The differences are, in fact, all-im portant. In Africa the drink is poisonous, and cal culated to produce the effects which the oath im precates; whereas, the 'water of jealousy,' how ever unpleasant, was prepared in a prescribed manner, with ingredients known to all to be per fectly innocuous. It could not therefore injure the innocent ; and its action upon the guilty must have resulted from the consciousness of having com mitted a horrible perjury, which crime, when the oath was so solemnly confirmed by the draught, and attended by such awful imprecations, was be lieved to be visitable with immediate death from heaven. It cannot be too strongly inculcated, that in the African examples the effect is not ascribed to the drink, but to a supernatural visitation upon a perjury which the confirmation of the 'oath drink' renders so awful.
(4) Oath-Drink. This name of 'oath-drink' is commonly applied to it on the Gold Coast. And it was, doubtless, to strengthen such an impression that this awful drink, so much dreaded in Africa, was with the Jews exclusively appropriated to the only ordeal trial among them.
(5) Result. The result of these views and illus trations will be, that the trial for suspected adul tery by the bitter water amounted to this—that a woman suspected of adultery by her husband was allowed to repel the charge by a public oath of purgation, which oath was designedly made so solemn in itself, and was attended by such awful circumstances, that it was in the highest degree un likely that it would be dared by any woman not supported by the consciousness of innocence. And the fact that no instance of the actual application of the ordeal occurs in Scripture, affords some countenance to the assertion of the Jewish writers —that the trial was so much dreaded by the women, that those who were really guilty gener ally avoided it by confession; and that thus the trial itself early fell into disuse. And if, as we have supposed, this mode of trial was only toler ated by Moses, the ultimate neglect of it must have been desired and intended by him. In later times, indeed, it was disputed in the Jewish schools, whether the husband was bound to prose cute his wife to this extremity, or whether it was not lawful for him to connive at and pardon her act, if he were so inclined. There were some who held that he was hound by his duty to prosecute while others maintained that it was left to his pleasure (T. Ilicros. tit. Sotah, fol. 16, 2).
(6) Abrogated. From the same source we learn that this form of trial was finally abrogated about forty years before the destruction of Jeru salem. The reason rssigned is, that the men them selves were at that time generally adulterous; and that God would not fulfil the imprecations of the ordeal oath upon the wife while the husband was guilty of the same crime (John viii :1-8).