ADULLAM, a city in the tribe of Judah, to the west of Hebron, whose king was slain by Joshua, Josh. xii, 15. It is frequently mentioned in the history of Saul and David; and is chiefly memorable from the cave in its neighbourhood, where David retired from Achish, king of Gath, when he was joined by the distressed and discontented, to the number of four hundred, over whom he became captain, 1 Sam. xxii, 1. Judas Maccabeus encamped in the plain of Adullam, where he passed the Sabbath day, 2 Mac. xii, 38. Eusebius says that, in his time, Adullam was a very great town, ten miles to the east of Eleutheropolis. ADULTERY, the violation of the marriage bed. The law of Moses punished with death both the man and the woman who were guilty of this crime, Lev. xx, 10. If a woman was betrothed to a man, and was guilty of this infamous crime before the marriage was completed, she was, in this case, along with her paramour, to be stoned, Deut. xxii, 22–24. When any man among the Jews, prompted by jealousy, suspected his wife of the crime of adultery, he brought her first before the judges, and informed them that, in consequence of his suspicions, he had privately admonished her, but that she was regardless of his admonitions. If before the judges she asserted her innocency, he required that she should drink the _waters of jealousy_, that God might by these means discover what she attempted to conceal, Num. v, 12, &c. The man then produced his witnesses, and they were heard. After this, both the man and the woman were conveyed to Jerusalem, and placed before the sanhedrim; the judges of which, by threats and other means, endeavoured to confound the woman, and make her confess. If she persisted in denying the fact, she was led to the eastern gate of the court of Israel, stripped of her own clothes, and dressed in black, before great numbers of her own sex. The priest then told her, that if she was really innocent, she had nothing to fear; but if guilty, she might expect to suffer all that the law had denounced against her, to which she answered, “Amen, amen.” The priest then wrote the terms of the law in this form:--“If a strange man hath not come near you, and you are not polluted by forsaking the bed of your husband, these bitter waters, which I have cursed, will not hurt you: but if you have polluted yourself by coming near to another man, and gone astray from your husband,--may you be accursed of the Lord, and become an example for all his people; may your thigh rot, and your belly swell till it burst; may these cursed waters enter into your belly, and being swelled therewith, may your thighs putrefy.“