This is the law of jealousies, when a wife goeth aside to another instead of her husband, and is defiled;
This is the law of jealousies. Adultery discovered and proved was punished with death. But strongly suspected cases would occur, and this law made provision for the conviction of the guilty person. It was, however, not a trial conducted according to the forms of judicial process, but an ordeal through which a suspected adulteress was made to go-the ceremony being of that terrifying nature that, on the known principles of human nature, guilt or innocence could not fail to appear. From the earliest times the jealousy of Eastern people has established ordeals for the detection and punishment of suspected unchastity in wives. The practice was deep-rooted as well as universal. And it has been thought that the Israelites being strongly biassed in favour of such usage, this law of jealousies 'was incorporated among the other instititions of the Mosaic economy, in order to free it from the idolatrous rites which the pagans had blended with it,' Viewed in this light, its sanction by divine authority, in a corrected and improved form, exhibits a proof at once of the wisdom and condescension of God.