Numbers 5-8
Not saying that the Lord didn't have his reasons, but those reasons are hard for me to fathom. I know I'm wrong here, but the test of marital faithfulness set forth in Numbers 5 seems to focus on the wrong partner. It lays out the procedures wherein if a husband expects that his wife has stepped out on him, then he can test her faithfulness by offering up a sacrifice and having the high priest make her drink a special concoction. If she was faithful, nothing bad would happen, but if she was unfaithful then her womb would shrink and her abdomen would swell. Seriously!
To fully understand this, I think we have to start from the sure knowledge that God had a good reason for this apparent paradox. Perhaps too many men were accusing their wives of infidelity or were jealous of them and were unrighteously handling the situation. So the Lord created a test that required the man to pay a fee (offering) to accuse his wife of infidelity, and the test would be administered by an independent source.
I don't know if something like this was the basis for the test of marital faithfulness, but we can be sure that the Lord wasn't just trying to find yet another way to get back at the women for the apple in the Garden of Eden.
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