The Book of Numbers, chapter 5 verse 11, starts a section out with the inescapable fact that this passage is not just some prophet or opinionated preacher or whatever, this is GOD speaking: “Then the LORD said to Moses:”

Numbers 5: 12-19 sets the stage: if a man knows or suspects that his wife has been sleeping with someone else, then he has to take her to the priest with a “grain offering of jealousy”. The priest takes the woman to “stand before the LORD”. He unloosens her hair. He puts the jealousy offering of grain into her hands. He takes some “holy water”, and sprinkles into it some dust from the temple floor. Then he puts her under oath and says “If you’re innocent, may this bitter water not harm you.”

But if she is guilty, it is God’s command that the priest ask God to curse her and cause her to have an abortion and have her uterus collapse, as a warning to others and as a way of making sure that the husband is only raising his own children.

Numbers 5: 20-22 (from the GOD’S WORD translation, 1995)-

20 If, in fact, you have been unfaithful and have had sexual intercourse with another man,



21 may the LORD make you an example for your people to see what happens when the curse of this oath comes true: The LORD will make your uterus drop and your stomach swell.’ “Then the priest will administer the oath and the curse by saying:

22 ‘May this water that can bring a curse go into your body and make your stomach swell and your uterus drop!’ “Then the woman will say, ‘Amen, amen!’

And the priest writes the curse on a scroll, and washes the words off into the bitter “holy water”, and makes the woman drink the water, which is designed to make her abort if she is guilty and to “cause her bitter pain” and to prevent her having any further children;

28 but if the woman is not unclean and is pure, she is not guilty and will be able to have children

… but only by her loving husband, of course.

Gotta love those primitive tribes and their old time religion!