Dealing with Disorder

NUMBERS 5

Almost everyone is familiar with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In scientific terms, it says, “Entropy tends to increase.” Or, to put it in more popular language, “Chaos happens.” I see the law at work in my house every day. The dust molecules never decide to organize themselves neatly in a pile in a corner. Left to their own devices, they distribute themselves evenly across the floor, the desk, and every other object in the room. I’ve noticed that entropy increases particularly swiftly in my childrenbedrooms. The toys distribute themselves all across the floor, almost without perceptible human involvement. However, they never reorganize themselves tidily into the closet without extensive and disciplined human intervention. Chaos is natural; order needs to be worked at.

It is the same way in the camp of Israel. The order that God has set up in Numbers 1–4 is not naturally self-sustaining. Chaos happens. Disorder and sin are part of our normal experience in this fallen world. It is normal, yet at the same time it is also dangerous, threatening the presence of God in the midst of his people. This fact of life needs to be accounted for if God is to dwell in the tabernacle at the heart of the camp. Order will not always exist naturally in Israel’s camp. The people therefore need to be instructed about disorder and sin—especially how to deal with it properly—just as much as they need guidance on the way things ought to be. Nor are we in a different situation from them. Although in our culture we would like to be able to talk about happy things all the time, the reality is that we too are sinners who need to know how to deal with that fact. Numbers 5 will help provide us with the answers we need.


NARRATIVE AND LAW

As we mentioned in the very first chapter, the whole structure of the book of Numbers is an alternating series of stories and laws that fit together in a complex structure. Why is that? Why is the story line of the journey through the wilderness constantly being interrupted by a sequence of laws? Charles Dickens and Emily Brontë didn’t do that with their novels. Even J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, which encompasses almost every conceivable genre of literature within its vast scope, doesn’t contain law codes. So why does the book of Numbers? The answer is that the heart of the book of Numbers is the dwelling of a holy God in the midst of his people, first of all in the pilgrim camp in the wilderness and ultimately looking forward to the day when he will dwell in their midst in the Promised Land. Since Israel’s God is holy, therefore his people must be holy also. An unholy people who come in contact with a holy God will be consumed by his wrath. If they continue to be unholy, he must either abandon them or destroy them altogether. The way to life, therefore, is necessarily the way of obedience to God’s laws. These are not arbitrary, meaningless regulations, busywork assigned to his people by an overcontrolling deity who has nothing better to do with his time. These laws are the way to life and blessing, the wisdom of a sovereign God unfolded for the benefit of the people with whom he has entered a covenant relationship. Life in all its fullness means life lived in the presence of God, according to his Law.

Yet that still doesn’t answer the question why these particular laws are given at this particular point in the story. They are not a comprehensive treatment of the laws connected with any particular issue. Some of these laws were given in more expanded form in Leviticus. Many key questions of jurisprudence are left unanswered. Yet for some reason these particular laws were inserted at this particular point in the story. We cannot therefore treat these laws in isolation from the narrative; they go together with it. What is the precise focus of the legislation in this chapter? Having organized the camp, God here gives his people some case studies in dealing with potential disorder, so that they may learn how to resolve the entropy issues that were bound to arise and threaten the presence of God in the midst of his people. After four chapters about holiness, this chapter is all about sin and how to deal with it.

There are three case studies in this chapter, each of which deals with a different issue and in turn shows us a different perspective on sin. In the first case, the issue is unintentional ritual defilement (vv. 1–4). The second situation deals with a deliberate sin that has been repented of (vv. 5–10), while the third case study deals with the complex issue of an accusation of adultery that lacks formal evidence (vv. 11–31). Each of these cases is addressed in a different way, but in each of them sin is recognized and dealt with. It is these ways of dealing with sin and counteracting its danger to the camp of God’s people that form the message of the chapter.


CASE STUDY 1: SIN AS DEFILEMENT

The first case study is very straightforward. It was possible for a person to contract ritual defilement in a number of ways in ancient Israel. The rules are spelled out in far greater detail in Leviticus 13–15; all we have here is a thumbnail summary. In essence, these ritual impurities focused on four elements that brought a person into contact with the realm of death: the loss or discharge of blood or semen, various wasting skin diseases, and contact with dead bodies.1 Contact with dead bodies self-evidently brought you into contact with the realm of death. Equally, blood and semen were associated with life; so their loss or emission moved you away from the realm of life into the realm of death. Finally, skin diseases of the kind that withered or ate away the flesh were a kind of living death, in which the body was literally dying in front of your eyes. All such contact with the realm of death in the Old Testament unfitted you for the presence of the true and living God. Therefore those who had contracted such ritual defilement were to be sent outside the camp. The laws were not concerned with public health or the potential infection of others with contagious diseases; the concern was simply that such defilement would make it impossible for the living God to dwell in their midst.

As we read the Biblical passages about ritual defilement, our instinctive reaction is perhaps to see this concern as superficial and unfair, even offensive. Why were these things regarded as important? To modern people, these laws may well seem like a primitive taboo that has no relevance to us. Why should someone be excluded from the presence of God simply because he suffers from a particular medical condition? Why does preparing a father’s body for burial make someone unfit to stand in God’s presence? Why should faithful married sexual intercourse keep anyone away from worship? At first sight, these regulations seem rather arbitrary and unjust to us.

Yet these laws were intended as a mirror to reveal to us the profound depths of our problem as human beings. The significance of this defilement picturing our alienation from God is enormous. Far from the Biblical perspective being shallow, on the contrary it is our culture’s view of sin and alienation that is shallow. In our society, people generally think that the only problem standing between them and God is their behavior. If I’m a good person, God will surely accept me; if I am a bad person, then God will reject me. The Bible, however, shows us that this analysis is superficial and thoughtless. Sin is not just about what you do; it is about your very nature as a human being in this world.


OUR ROOT PROBLEM: DEATH

Do you see the implications of this? If the issue that makes us unfit to stand in God’s presence is not simply an outward, behavioral one, then our problem isn’t simply saying bad words and hanging with the wrong crowd at school. It isn’t simply those who cheat on their wives and rob banks who are alienated from God. Our human problem, at its deepest root, is the principle of death that is consuming our souls just as surely as leprosy devours the flesh. We are dead men walking, surrounded on all sides by a community of the dead. Even while physically we continue to live, our souls atrophy and waste away from the inside out in the absence of God.
The prophet Isaiah put it eloquently in his own day when he said, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5). He understood that mutual contact in the midst of a society of sinners continually defiles us all. Left to myself, even the highest and holiest of human acts does not move me nearer to God but keeps me away from him. As the prophet goes on to say, “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away” (64:6). Even my righteous deeds, such as being kind to my neighbor and loving my children, defile me and everyone with whom I have contact.

If that is true, then there is absolutely nothing I can do to present myself as acceptable to God. I inherited this body of death from my first forefather, Adam. His sinful nature, transmitted to me, turned even God’s high and holy law into an instrument of death in my life (Romans 7:7–13). I am by nature defiled and unclean, and therefore I defile everything I touch. This natural depravity and darkness comprehensively unfits me for God’s presence. Of course, my natural depravity proceeds to work itself out in all manner of particular sins for which I am also accountable, but my fundamental problem is deeper than that: it lies in the fact that I am a sinner. In the penetrating analysis of the human condition that the Bible presents, I am born unfit for God’s presence, only deserving permanent exclusion from the camp of God.

What is more, in order to be admitted into God’s presence, the root problem had to be dealt with. If the problem was an emission, the person needed to be washed clean before he or she could reenter the camp. If the problem was a skin disease, his or her flesh needed to be made whole before he or she could come back in. Wholeness and cleanliness were needed before you could enter into God’s presence. If you were a leper, you might well stand outside the camp crying out what the Apostle Paul cries in Romans 7:24: “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” If you had a permanent flow of blood, you might cry out, “Who will wash me and render me clean?” That cleansing and cure was not in your own power to accomplish. You couldn’t simply decide to follow God and then you could come in. On the contrary, your inclusion required a miraculous act of God if it was to be achieved.


THE ANSWER FOR OUR ALIENATION

Yet if the Old Testament picture shows us the depth of our alienation from God, the New Testament shows us the glorious answer to that alienated condition. We too are alienated from God, dead in transgressions and sins. But the answer to the leper’s cry, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” is “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:25). Jesus is the one who has come to deliver us from death and wash us clean. That is why we see Jesus in his earthly ministry bringing into the covenant community those who under the old covenant had been excluded. The woman who had had an emission of blood for many years and had tried in vain to find medical relief for her condition came to Jesus and touched him (Luke 8:43–48). From the perspective of the book of Numbers, that was an extremely dangerous act! An unclean woman was deliberately bringing herself into physical contact with the Holy One of Israel. No wonder that when Jesus stopped and demanded to know who had touched him, she came forward trembling. But in Jesus she found physical and spiritual wholeness, rest for her body and peace for her soul. She who was once an outsider, alienated from God and his people, was now brought in through the touch of Jesus.

The lepers too came to Jesus, and he touched them (Luke 5:12–15). He healed them from their living death and told them to go and show themselves to a priest, just as the Law required, so that they would be able to return to the worship of God. Notice that in neither case did Jesus say, “That law is silly and outdated. I hereby abolish it.” Rather, in each situation he dealt with the person’s need for cleansing so they could enter God’s presence. The profound picture of separation from God that was set up in the Old Testament found its answer in Jesus Christ. He came to deal with the living death in our souls by washing our hearts clean. He came to take us from death and bring us into life. Indeed, he did so by taking upon himself the very exclusion from the presence of God that we deserved. He was himself taken outside the holy city of Jerusalem to be crucified, “outside the camp” as Hebrews 13:11–13 puts it. He was cut off from fellowship with his Father on the cross, in a black night of agony in his soul that far outweighed the physical sufferings of crucifixion. That is how he enabled our alienation from God to be dealt with, so that we might no longer be outsiders, condemned to eternity away from the presence of God. Now we are God’s children, welcome into his presence for Jesus’ sake.


CASE STUDY 2: SIN AS TRANSGRESSION

The second case study in dealing with sin in Numbers 5:5–10 is quite different from the first. Instead of addressing the conditions that are largely outside our control that unfit us for God’s presence, it addresses a variety of potential sins that are quite deliberate. Our sin problem is much more than our wrong thoughts and actions, but it is certainly not less than them. The exact nature of these sins is not explained in detail. The parallel passage in Leviticus 6 suggests that the most common issues that these provisions related to involved theft by deception or misrepresentation, but here the offense is left deliberately vague, perhaps because the focus is not so much on how to define the sin as it is on how to deal with the sin. In contrast to the previous case study, which showed us sin as defilement, this study shows us sin as transgression.

In focusing our attention on sin as transgression, this passage reminds us that sin often has two dimensions: it is an offense against God and against man. Therefore, dealing with the sin involves addressing the offense that has occurred in both directions. The first step in dealing with such sin is always confession—recognizing publicly that a wrong has been committed (v. 7). Taking responsibility for one’s actions and agreeing with God that they were wrong is an important part of the process of dealing with sin. As long as we are still excusing our actions, we have not come to recognize their true nature. Confession by itself was not enough, however. It was also to be accompanied by restitution of the full amount misappropriated, plus 20 percent (v. 7). The persons who had committed the sin not only had to say they were sorry but also had to do what was in their power to put it right. If the damaged party was no longer alive, restitution could be paid to a close relative. If there was no relative, it was to be given to the Lord instead (v. 8). In any event, justice would be seen to be done.

Thus far we have simply been dealing with the horizontal aspect of sin, putting right the damage that transgression does to those whom we have offended. But sin is not only, or even primarily, an offense against other human beings. It is far more profoundly an offense against God. That is why after David committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband Uriah exposed on the front lines of battle and left to die, he cried out, “Against you, you only, have I sinned” (Psalm 51:4). David didn’t mean that his sin had no impact on other people—far from it! People had died as a result of his actions. Yet the most fundamental aspect of sin as transgression is the offense that we cause to a holy God. For that reason in Numbers 5, after confession and restitution, the sinner was required to offer a ram to make atonement for him (v. 8). In this way, the fact that the offense was committed against the Lord was recognized publicly. If the sinner were not himself to die, something or someone must die in his place.


THE ANSWER FOR TRANSGRESSION

The perspective of sin as transgression reminds us that even after there has been confession and restitution, there still needs to be a sacrifice. The wages of sin are death, and those wages have to be paid, either by the sinner or by someone else. This perspective too points us forward to Christ, the Lamb of God who makes atonement for his people in his death on the cross. Why did Jesus have to die such a brutal death? He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins (1 John 2:2). He had to die to pay the penalty for my sin and your sin, and that penalty is death itself. He took our place in death to satisfy the justice of God, to cover the offense that our sin causes to a holy God.

The sacrifice of Christ certainly doesn’t give us a free pass to sin all we want. On the contrary, when we sin, we too are to confess our sin, as 1 John 1:9 reminds us. Where appropriate, we too are to make restitution to the ones hurt by our actions. When the tax collector Zacchaeus became a believer, he offered restitution to the tune of four times the amount to anyone he had defrauded (Luke 19:8). The effect of grace on our lives is to make our hearts eager to do what is right. Yet ultimately it is not our confession or our restitution that saves us but Christ’s death in our place.


CASE STUDY 3: SIN AS UNFAITHFULNESS

So then, in Numbers 5 we first of all see sin as defilement and transgression. Most of the chapter, however, is taken up with the third case study: the woman who is suspected of marital unfaithfulness. There was no proof of her guilt or innocence, only the suspicion that she had been unfaithful. To deal with this situation, she was subjected to what may seem to us to be a bizarre and primitive ritual. What is going on here? Why does this particular offense attract such extensive description at this point in the book of Numbers?

The answer is, I think, to see that here we have a third picture of sin: sin as unfaithfulness. Since marriage is the key metaphor for the relationship between God and Israel, it is not surprising that adultery is the key metaphor for breaches in that relationship. Whenever Israel went after idols, they were at the same time being untrue to their Husband, the Lord.

So how was Israel to deal with the situation where a wife was suspected of such a serious breach in the relationship, yet there was no conclusive proof? The answer is that they were to take it to the Lord and leave judgment in his hands. When he brought the charge against his wife, the husband was also to bring a grain offering (v. 15). The word for grain offering (minḥâ) was elsewhere used of gifts given as a mark of submission to a superior. So to bring a grain offering was an act of submission to the Lord. This grain offering, however, was devoid of the usual markers of joy that would be offered with it—oil and incense (v. 15). There was no joy in this matter.

Meanwhile, the priest was to prepare a cup containing a mixture of holy water and sacred dust from the floor of the tabernacle (v. 17). The woman stood before the Lord with her hair down, a symbol of the potentially broken covenant of marriage, and the priest was then to charge the woman on oath with a self-imprecatory curse. He said in essence, “If you have not been unfaithful, then let this water not cause you harm; but if you have been unfaithful, then may you become barren.” The woman was then to respond with the words, “Amen. So be it” (vv. 19–22). The written curses would then be washed off into the water, which the woman would have to drink, emphasizing the fact that these were words that she would literally have to eat (vv. 23, 24). The cup itself is said to be a cup of bitter water, not so much in terms of the taste (though that probably wasn’t particularly pleasant either) but the potential outcome. If she were guilty, the Lord would impose the curse that she called down upon herself, and her abdomen would swell and her thigh waste away—most probably a reference to the disordering of her reproductive organs so that she was unable to bear children. If she were innocent, however, the curse would have no effect, and she would continue to live a normal, fruitful life.

Calling it a cup of bitter water (mey hammārim) recalls the water that the people of Israel could not drink at Marah because it was bitter (mārîm; Exodus 15:23). On that occasion, immediately after they crossed the Red Sea, God enabled Moses to transform the water to make it sweet by adding a piece of wood. This was, the Lord said, a test: If they obeyed his laws and did what was right in his eyes, then they would not suffer the curses that came upon the Egyptians but would experience God as their healer (Exodus 15:26). The similarities are striking, especially in the light of the fact that barrenness and a miscarrying womb was a standard curse for covenant unfaithfulness (see Exodus 23:26).2 God the healer can transform bitter water and make it sweet, removing its power to harm. Yet he is also God the Judge, who has the power to bring a curse on covenant-breakers. Her obedience, or lack of obedience, would determine the outcome of this test on the woman.

This parallel shows us that the test was not thought of as magic. There was nothing intrinsic in the water or dust or ink that would harm her if she were an adulteress. Only God could bring about the curse upon her. It was an act of faith on the part of the woman and the community, placing judgment in the hands of God, who sees the unseen, rather than in the hands of man. We should also note that it was not an unfair procedure. Unlike many apparently similar rituals that existed in the ancient world, it didn’t presume the woman’s guilt or innocence. She wasn’t thrown into the river to see whether or not she would drown. The procedure protected the innocent against unfounded charges as much as it brought the guilty to the bar of justice. The adulterous wife would experience God’s covenant curse for her unfaithfulness, while the innocent wife would emerge vindicated.


THE ANSWER FOR SPIRITUAL ADULTERY

Yet if adulterous wives were certain to receive God’s covenant curse, even in the absence of compelling human testimony, what will God do with his own adulterous wife, Israel? In her case, there was no doubt as to her guilt. The prophets repeatedly document her long history of whoredom, which is a metaphor for the people’s spiritual unfaithfulness to God (see Hosea 1–3; Ezekiel 16, 23). No tribunal in the land would declare the charge against her unproven. So what would happen to her before the bar of the heavenly tribunal? The answer is that God himself, the jealous husband (Numbers 5:14), will bring her to trial and make her drink the cup of God’s wrath. In Isaiah 51:17, 22 and Ezekiel 23:30–34 we see God giving his unfaithful bride a bitter cup to swallow, a cup full of lamentation and woe. Since she is self-evidently as guilty as sin, how will she escape when she drinks the cup? Will she not feel the full force of God’s curse upon her? Will her reproductive power not be cut off, so that she bears no more children?

The answer is yes—and no. Yes, Israel was forced to drain the bitter cup to its dregs at the time of the exile. She faced the punishment of exile and the death of a whole generation away from the Promised Land, the ultimate sanction of the covenant for her long history of unfaithfulness. Yet that was not the end of the story for Israel. God rescued her from the wilderness of the nations and brought her back to her own land. He went after his unfaithful wife and wooed her back.

How can that be? Does God have a double standard—hard on human adultery but soft on spiritual adultery? By no means. God was able to go after his errant wife and bring her back because Jesus Christ would himself take up the bitter cup and drain it in the place of his bride, the church. At the last supper he lifted up the cup and said, “This cup … is the new covenant in my blood; drink it in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:20). We are so familiar with those words that we repeat at every Communion service that they have lost their power to shock us. “This cup is … my blood,” said Jesus. It wasn’t literally his blood, of course, any more than the cup that we drink at the Lord’s Table is literally changed into something different than wine. It remained the same substance. Yet for the cup we share to be a cup of blessing for us, it had to become a cup of suffering and woe for him, a bitter cup. In order for us who are covenant-breakers to be invited to the covenant meal, he himself had to drink the cup of our suffering in our place, shedding his blood for us on the cross. His curse for my blessing—his death for my life. Jesus is the answer to the plight of the guilty adulterous wife, who is each of us: we are all by nature idolatrous, following the desires and fancies of our own hearts and not God.

Isaiah 53 draws all three of these pictures of the remedies for sin together in the experience of the Suffering Servant. He was cut off from the land of the living for our sake (v. 8); his life was our guilt offering (v. 10); and who can speak of his descendants (v. 8)? He was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities; yet the result of his bearing the curse is that he will see his offspring and prolong his days (v. 10). Jesus is the one who has dealt with our sin in such a way that we are able to come just as we are to a holy God, there to find mercy and grace sufficient for our needs. It doesn’t matter who we are or what we have done. Whether our problem is defilement, transgression, or spiritual adultery, Christ has paid the price for us and has enabled us to draw near to receive God’s blessing. He therefore invites us to come to his table and participate by faith in his feast, looking forward to the final covenant meal at which the cup we will share together will be completely free from suffering and pain, filled to overflowing with joy and adoration.

Duguid, I. M., & Hughes, R. K. (2006). Numbers: God’s presence in the wilderness (pp. 67–76). Crossway Books.