The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 56: Jealous Husbands (2022)

Episode Date: February 25, 2022

Fr. Mike explains how God elevates the dignity of women by providing new laws around husbands accusing their wives of unfaithfulness. Today we read from Numbers 5, Deuteronomy 5, and Psalm 90. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/bibleinayear. Please note: The Bible contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Bible in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's voice and live life through the lens of Scripture. The Bible in a Year podcast is brought to you by Ascension using the Great Adventure Bible Timeline. We'll read all the way from Genesis to Revelation, discovering how the story of salvation unfolds and how we fit into that story today. Today is day 56, and I'll be reading from Numbers chapter 5, Deuteronomy chapter 5, and we'll be praying Psalm 90.

As always, the Bible translation that I'm using is the Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition. I'm using the Great Adventure Bible from Ascension. If you want to download your own Bible in a Year reading plan, you can visit ascensionpress.com slash Bible in a Year. And also, I invite you to subscribe in the podcast app to receive daily episodes that drop every single day, as you probably know, since it is day 56. Did I say 56? I meant to say 56. If I didn't, it's day 56, you guys. And so

we're reading from Numbers 5, Deuteronomy 5, and praying Psalm 90. The book of Numbers chapter 5. Unclean persons. The Lord said to Moses, command the sons of Israel that they put out of the camp every leper and everyone having a discharge and everyone that is unclean through contact with the dead. You shall put out both male and female, putting them outside the camp, that they may not defile their camp in the midst of which I dwell. And the sons of Israel did so, and drove them outside the camp, as the Lord said to Moses, so did the sons of Israel. Confession and Restitution And the Lord said to Moses, Say to the sons of Israel, when a man or woman commits any of the sins that men commit by breaking faith with the Lord, and that person is guilty, he shall confess

his sin which he has committed, and he shall make full restitution for his wrong, adding a fifth to it, and giving it to him to whom he did the wrong. But if the man has no kinsman to whom restitution may be made for the wrong, the restitution for wrong shall go to the Lord for the priest, in addition to the ram of atonement with which atonement is made for him. And every offering, all the holy things of the sons of Israel, which they bring to the priest shall be his. And every man's holy things shall be his. Whatever any man gives to the priest shall be his. An unfaithful wife or jealous husband. And the Lord said to Moses, say to the sons of Israel, if any man's wife goes astray and acts unfaithfully against him, if a man lies with her carnally and it is hidden from the eyes of her husband and she is undetected

though she has defiled herself and there is no witness against her since she was not taken in the act. And if the spirit of jealousy comes upon him and he is jealous of his wife who has defiled herself, and there is no witness against her, since she was not taken in the act. And if the spirit of jealousy comes upon him, and he is jealous of his wife who has defiled herself, or if the spirit of jealousy comes upon him, and he is jealous of his wife, though she has not defiled herself, then the man shall bring his wife to the priest, and bring the offering required of her, a tenth of an ephah of barley meal. He shall pour no oil upon it, and put no frankincense on it, for it is a serial offering of jealousy, a serial offering of remembrance,

bringing iniquity to remembrance. And the priest shall bring her near and set her before the Lord, and the priest shall take holy water from an earthen vessel and shall take some of the dust that is on the floor of the tabernacle and put it into the water. And the priest shall set the woman before the Lord and unbind the hair of the woman's head, and place in her hands the

serial offering of remembrance, which is the serial offering of jealousy. And in his hand the priest shall have the water of bitterness that brings the curse. Then the priest shall make her take an oath, saying, If no man has lain with you, and if you have not turned aside to uncleanness while you are under your husband's authority, be free from this water of bitterness that brings the curse. But if you have gone astray, though you are under your husband's authority, and if you have defiled yourself, and some man other than your husband has lain with you, then let the priest make the woman take the oath of the curse, and say to the woman, the Lord make you an execration and an oath among

your people. When the Lord makes your thigh fall away and your body swell, may this water that brings the curse pass into your bowels and make your body swell and your thigh fall away. And the woman shall say, amen, amen. Then the priest shall write these curses in a book and wash them off into the water of bitterness. And he shall make the woman drink the water of bitterness that brings the curse, and the water that brings the curse shall enter into her and cause bitter pain. And the priest shall take the cereal offering of jealousy out of the woman's hand, and shall wave the cereal offering before the Lord, and bring it to the altar. And the priest shall take a handful of the cereal offering as its memorial portion,

and burn it upon the altar, and afterward shall make the woman drink the water. And when he has made her drink the water, then if she has defiled herself and has acted unfaithfully against her husband, the water that brings the curse shall enter into her and cause bitter pain, and her body shall swell, and her thigh shall fall away, and the woman shall become an execration among the people. But if the woman has not defiled herself and is clean, then she shall be free and shall conceive children. This is the law in cases of jealousy. When a wife, though under her husband's authority, goes astray and defiles herself, or when the spirit of jealousy comes upon a man and he is jealous of his wife, then he shall set the woman before the Lord and the priest shall execute upon her all this law. The man shall be free from iniquity,

but the woman shall bear her iniquity. The book of Deuteronomy chapter 5, the 10 commandments. And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, Hear, O Israel, the statutes and the ordinances which I speak in your hearing this day, and you shall learn them, and be careful to do them. The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. Not with our fathers did the Lord make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive this day.

The Lord spoke with you face to face at the mountain out of the midst of the fire, while I stood between the Lord and you at that time to declare to you the word of the Lord, for you were afraid because of the fire and you did not go up into the mountain. He said, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt,

out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourselves a graven image, nor any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing merciful love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not take the name of

the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. Observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. In it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your manservant or your maidservant or your ox or your donkey or any of your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your manservant and your maidservant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. Honor your father and your mother

as the Lord your God commanded you, that your days may be prolonged and that it may go well with you in the land which the Lord your God gives you. You shall not kill, neither shall you commit adultery, neither shall you steal, neither shall you bear false witness against your neighbor. Neither shall you covet your neighbor's wife, and you shall not desire your neighbor's house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's. Moses, the mediator of God's will. was burning with fire, you came near to me, all the heads of your tribes and your elders, and you said, Behold, the Lord our God has shown us his glory and greatness, and we have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire. We have this day seen God speak with man, and man still live. Now therefore, why should we die? For this great fire will consume us. If we hear the voice of the

Lord our God any more, we shall die. For who is there of all flesh that has heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of fire as we have and still lived? Go near and hear all that the Lord our God will say and speak to us all that the Lord our God will speak to you and we will hear and do it. And the Lord heard your words when you spoke to me. And the Lord said to me, I have heard the words of this people, which they have spoken to you. They have rightly said all that they have spoken. Oh, that they had such a mind as this always, to fear me and to keep all my commandments, that it might go well with them and with their children forever. Go, and say to them, Return to your tents. But you stand here by me, and I will tell you all the commandments and the statutes and the ordinances which you shall teach them, that they may do them in the land which I give them to possess. You shall be careful to do, therefore,

as the Lord your God has commanded you, you shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left. You shall walk in all the way which the Lord your God has commanded you, that you may live, and that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land which you shall possess. Psalm 90, God's Eternity and Human Frailty. A Prayer of Moses, the man of God. Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world,

from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. You turn men back to the dust and say, Turn back, O children of men, for a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night. You sweep men away. They are like a dream, like grass which is renewed in the morning. In the morning it flourishes and is renewed. In the evening it fades and withers.

For we are consumed by your anger. By your wrath we are overwhelmed. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your countenance. For all our days pass away under your wrath. Our years come to an end like a sigh. The years of our life are threescore and ten, or even by reason of strength fourscore.

But their span is but toil and trouble. They are soon gone, and we fly away. Who considers the power of your anger and your wrath according to the fear of you? So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. Return, O Lord. How long? Have pity on your servants. Satisfy us in the morning with your mercy that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad as many days as you have afflicted us and as many years as we have seen evil. Let your work be manifest to your servants and your glorious power to their children. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us and establish the work of our hands upon us.

Yes, establish the work of our hands. Father in heaven, we give you praise and glory. We thank you for your word today. We thank you not only for your word, we thank you for your faithfulness. Lord God, we find so often that we are unfaithful and yet you are patient with us. We find that we are fickle and yet you are stable. You are steadfast in your love for us. And so this day we give you praise and we thank you for continuing to speak to us. We thank you for continuing to be with us. We thank you for continuing to be ours, to be our God. You are not ashamed. Hebrews 11 says, you are not ashamed to be our God.

Thank you so much. Help us never to be ashamed to be your people, to belong to you, to be the sheep of your pasture, those you have chosen. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Okay, so there are a number of things to talk about today. The first is we have to deal with Numbers chapter 5. In Numbers chapter 5, what do we have? We have the occasion, the subtitle of after we talked about confession and restitution, after we talked about leprosy, we talked about an unfaithful wife or jealous husband. And that's how it's described because it says if a man is even jealous of his wife, meaning that he does not have any proof that she has been unfaithful to him, this whole section

can strike us, especially modern readers who have kind of better sensibilities. Well, yeah, actually, yes. Remember the plus one theory of education is that sense of God is starting from a certain place with this culture and he's moving them along. And so consider this. In the ancient world, a woman was considered to be under full authority of her husband.

So if he even accused her, he could do whatever he wanted to do with his wife. And here comes the law. Here comes the law of Moses in Numbers chapter five. And the law of Moses says, you don't actually wanted to do with his wife. And here comes the law. Here comes the law of Moses. Here in Numbers chapter five. And the law of Moses says you don't actually get to do that. Yes. Remember back in Genesis chapter three, where one of the consequences of the fall is this tension and this, I mean, the horrible tension between men and women, between wives and husbands, where men are tempted so often to dominate, to use women.

And this is part of the remedy of this. What do you mean remedy? Well, remember, the ancient world, a woman was considered the full property of her husband. And in all of the Middle Eastern cultures, if a man was jealous, then he could do literally whatever he wanted to her. But here's the plus one theory of education, where the Lord God says through Moses that he doesn't get to do whatever he wants. He has to bring in a mediator. He brings her to the priest. Now, what happens after he brings her to the priest can be distressing

to us again, because it's what's referred to as a trial by ordeal. You know, you think about the Salem witch trials. We think about those other times where, I mean, think of Monty Python, where if she floats, she's a witch. And if she sinks, then she's not a witch. But if she sinks, then she means she's dead. And so this, right, that kind of that silliness that we see. And yet trial by ordeal was actually relatively common. It's not the best, obviously, as we know. But the interesting thing here is what happens in the trial by ordeal? What happens is that the woman will drink this water mixed with some dust, essentially, or with the cereal offering.

And if she's guilty, a miracle has to happen to prove that she's guilty. Normally, she would just drink it and be completely fine. And so, and this is the thing, this is why there's some balance here. And this is part of the genius, even if it's problematic for us. But part of the genius of the scripture is, A, the man does not have total authority over the woman. He has to bring her to a mediator because he has to submit to another higher law because both of them find themselves under the law, right?

Your numbers in Deuteronomy, Leviticus, the whole thing. The second thing is this trial by ordeal, which again, to us seems very unfair, is the opposite of the Monty Python sketch, where it's what happens if she's guilty, a miracle has to prove that she's guilty. She's naturally protected by this process rather than threatened by it. If I hope that makes sense, I hope that makes sense. Because normally she would, like any person, would just drink water mixed with whatever this was, the cereal offering or the dust, and nothing would happen.

Exactly. That is part of this point. It was a defensive mechanism against the jealousy of men against their wives. Now, this would happen, of course, in any culture. There would be this jealousy between each other. There'd also be a high need to be able to maintain faithfulness amongst this community of people who are now in the wilderness. Again, once again, they've just been freed. In the book of Numbers, they have just been freed. They've been free for one year plus, and they don't necessarily know how to live as free people, and God is teaching them.

So what strikes us right away as being like, that is so weird. Keep in mind, this is a step towards greater equality. This is a step towards greater honor and respect for both male and female. Hopefully that makes sense. Following off to that, we go back to Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy is now after all of this time in the wilderness. After all this time in the wilderness, Moses is reminding the people of what happened at Mount Horeb that first year, Mount Sinai, Mount Horeb, same place. Moses is reminding what happened that first year when God spoke out of the fire. They were like, yeah, Moses, you talk to the Lord because we're just overwhelmed by the fact that here is the Lord God who is speaking to us out of this fire on this mountain.

Two things to note. One is that it says that the Lord spoke to them face to face. And yet we look at other places where Moses said, God, let me see your face. And the Lord God said them face to face. And yet we look at other places where Moses said, God, let me see your face. And the Lord God said, you can't see my face and live. So what's happening here? Talk to the Lord face to face, and yet you can't see my face and live. Well, talking to the Lord face to face in the Hebrew idiom doesn't necessarily mean like that God has revealed his full glory person to person, face to face. What it means is in an intimate way, in a way that was person to person, that here is the person of God speaking to the person of Moses or the person of God speaking to the people of God.

And so that the Lord spoke to them face to face would be that idiom saying like in an intimate, deeply personal way. So just keep that in mind. The last piece, guys, we're going to wrap this up. The last piece has to do with the Ten Commandments. And in the Ten Commandments, obviously, there is the commandment that you shall not make for yourselves a graven image.

And I think that this is important because one of the things that sometimes people misunderstand about Catholics is they say that, yeah, you worship images and you violate the commandments by making images. And one of the things we need to understand is this, is that the catechism points this out and says, yes, of course, we would not make images ever to worship. Nevertheless, catechism says in 2130, it says, already in the Old Testament, God ordained or permitted the making of images that pointed symbolically towards salvation by the incarnate word.

Because here's Jesus, who is the full image of the Father. So it was the bronze serpent. We're going to get to that in the book of Numbers later on. The Ark of the Covenant was an image with the cherubim over the top of the Ark of the Covenant were images that God had commanded his people to make. And so what we're talking about is not a strict or complete absolute prohibition against the making of images, but it's against the making of images in order to worship those images. Going on in 2131, the Catechism says, basing itself on the mystery of the incarnate word,

meaning the God who became flesh, right? So invisible God becoming visible. The Seventh Ecumenical Council at Nicaea, which happened in 787, so early in the life of the church, justified against the iconoclasts. Those are people who wanted to break icons, right? Iconoclasts. Justified the veneration of icons of Christ, but also of the mother of God, the angels, and all the saints. By becoming incarnate, the son of God introduced a new, what they call, economy of images. So the Christian veneration of images is not contrary to the first commandment, which proscribes idols. But in fact, it's a respectful veneration of what

the image represents. And if we have any hesitation with that, realize that words are similar. What do I mean? Words are things we create, right? That represent the reality we're trying to express. And so we don't worship the Bible, but the Bible is held in great esteem. And the Bible contains what? The Bible contains words that themselves are not God himself, but represent what God has revealed to us. This is an analogy I'm trying to make here. So we have an image of Jesus on the cross. We have an image of Jesus and an icon. And we also have an image of Jesus that's brought to us through the Bible. And none of those things are a violation of the commandment against images, because we all recognize that the word itself

is, I mean, the words on the page themselves are not the word himself, as well as the fact that the image of the crucifixion or the image of the icon is not the word himself, but they simply represent the truth. They represent reality in this, in our limited human frailty way. I hope that makes any sense. But again, we're continuing this journey. And if you've made it to day 56, I am so proud of you. We're going to keep praying for each other. Keep praying for me, please. I am every day praying for you because this community of people who are going through

this Bible in a year, every day, with every passing day, even if you miss a day, just catch up. We're still walking. We're still moving. Every passing day, this community is being forged even more strongly and even more tightly because sometimes as days go along, it gets smaller. But we will continue to be faithful because God is faithful. We'll continue to be steadfast because God is steadfast. And even when we fall, we can get back up again because our Lord God meets us when we fall. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.