It’s nominally for both, but in reality it most certainly is meant to condone abortion. For what reason would a man living in the those times have to suspect one of his wives had been unfaithful?
She wouldn’t have an iPhone that contained some incriminating text messages to some other dude. In fact women back then were by and large illiterate, so a written correspondence in any form wouldn’t be in the cards. It’s not like he’s gonna catch her talking on the phone to this guy, either.
See, here’s another dirty secret about the Bible, both OT and NT: contrary to what American evangelicals prefer to make believe, the Bible does not say that marriage is “one man and one woman.” It does not say that. In fact there’s no clear definition (i.e. one passage or multiple passages saying the same thing) of what qualifies as a marriage.
If you read it, and by that I mean all of it and not just the flowery passages your pastor carefully selected for recommendation to you, what you’ll come away with is this: the implied, consensus biblical definition of marriage is one man and however many women that man can afford to keep in his house.
Since that’s the case, here’s why one of a man’s wives would be subjected to this nasty bit of insanity that’s found in Numbers 5:
Men traveled with other men for hunting quite a bit and they would be gone for long stretches. If one of them returned home and one of his wives, that he didn’t favor as much as the others, turned up looking like she was pregnant when she should not be, THAT was the hint that led him to believe she had cheated on him.
It wasn’t based on “intuition” or “instinct,” or even paranoia. The fucking girl is pregnant, and he knows it’s not by him. Yeah Numbers 5 and its test of the unfaithful wife does list the possibilities of what happens when a woman drinks that nasty ass water, but we all know where it’s leading. It’s leading to a nightmarish conclusion.
So by now, if you’re honest, you might be asking “so if he already knows, why take her to the priest to find out what he already knows?” The answer is simple. No man wants one of his wives carrying around some other dude’s bastard, especially when the deed was done while she was already married. And that’s really the point; that men in those times had as much respect for a woman’s choice as American conservatives do today.
Fortunately for all of us, there’s as much reason to believe that dusty water could actually serve as a magic potion that induced abortions as there is to believe in that ridiculous book in general.
and it’s about time to remind our wonderful readers that America is not a Christian theocracy and it would be a ludicrous waste of time defending one’s political views on the basis of what’s found in the Bible. But however ludicrous it is, it’s that much more ludicrous to defend one’s political views on the basis of what’s imagined to be found in the Bible. To me, that’s like basing speed limits on the idea that reaching 88 mph will cause the car to disappear and reanimate at a different point in time.