ADULTERY, TRIAL OF. It would be unjust to the spirit of the Mosaical legislation to sup pose that the trial of the suspected wife by the bitter water, called the Water of ,7ealousy, was by it first produced. It is to be regarded as an attempt to mitigate the evils of, and to bring under legal control, an old custom which could not be entirely abrogated. The original usage, which it was designed to mitigate, was probably of the kind which we still find in 'Western Africa, where in cases of murder, adultery, or witchcraft, the accused is required to drink for purgation from the charge of a mixture called the red water. The differences, however, between this and the usage sanctioned by Moses are marked, and, in fact, all-important. According to the usage in Africa, if a party is accused and denies the crime, he is required to drink the red water, and, on refusing, is deemed guilty of the offence. The trial is so much dreaded that innocent persons often confess themselves guilty, in order to avoid it. And, yet, the im mediate effect is supposed to result less from the water itself than from the terrible oath with which it is drunk; for there are instances which shew that the draught is the seal and sanction of the most solemn oath which barbarous imaginations have been able to devise. The person who drinks the red water invokes the Fetish to destroy him if he is really guilty of the offence with which he is charged. The drink is made by an infusion in water of pieces of a certain tree, or of herbs. It is highly poisonous in itself; and, if rightly prepared, the only chance of escape is the rejection of it by the stomach, in which case the party is deemed innocent ; as he also is if, being retained, it has no sensible effect, which can only be the case when the priests (so to call them), who have the manage ment of the matter, are influenced by private con siderations, or by reference to the probabilities of the case, to prepare the draught with a view to acquittal. The imprecations upon the accused if he be guilty, are repeated in an awful manner by the priests, and the effect is watched very keenly If the party seems affected by the draught, like one intoxicated, and begins to foam at the mouth, he is considered undoubtedly guilty, and is slain on the spot ; or else he is left to the operation of the poisonous draught, which causes the belly to swell and burst, and occasions death (Bahot, p. 126; Bosman, p. 148; Artus, in De Bry, vi. 62; Villault, p. 191 ; Corry's IFIndward Coast, p. 71; Church Missionary Paper, No. 17; Davis's journal, p. The resemblances and the differences between this and the trial by bitter water, as described in Num. v. 11-31, will be apparent on comparison. The object, namely, to discover a crime incapable of being proved by evidence, is the same ; the oath and a draught as its sanction, are essentially the same; and similar also are the effects upon the guilty, but as the draught prescribed by Moses was composed of perfectly harmless ingredients, where as that used in Africa is poisonous, these effects were in the former case entirely judicial, whereas in the latter they are natural from the action of the poison. Similar practices may be produced from
other quarters. Hesiod [Theog. 775-95] reports that when a falsehood had been told by any of the gods, Jupiter was wont to send Iris to bring some water out of the river Styx in a golden ves.;el; upon this an oath was taken, and if the god swore falsely, he remained for a whole year without life or motion. There was an ancient temple in Sicily, in which were two very deep basins, called Delli, always full of hot and sulphurous water, but never running over. Here the more solemn oaths were taken ; and perjuries. were immediately punished most severely (Diod. Sic. xi. 67). This is also mentioned by Aristotle, Silius Italicus, Virgil, and Macrobius ; and from the first it would seem that the oath was written upon a ticket and cast into the water. The ticket floated if the oath was true, and sank if it was false. In the latter case the punishment which followed was considered as an act of Divine vengeance.
The result at which we arrive is, that the trial for suspected adultery 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 unlikely 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 generally 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 tolerated 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 prosecute his wife to this extremity, or whether it was not law fill for him to connive at and pardon her act, if he were so inclined. There were some who held that he was bound by his duty to prosecute, while others maintained that it was left to his pleasure (T. Hieros. tit. Sotah, fol. 16, 2).
From the same source we learn that this form of trial was finally abrogated about forty years before the destruction of Jerusalem. The reason assigned is, that the men themselves 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.