Page 277.—The law respecting the water of jealousy will be found Num. v. 11-31. and the Rabbinical traditions in Lightfoot, Works, i. 982. Jos. Ant. iii. 11. 6. To many readers it will doubtless appear a harsh and unequal institution, authorizing one party to impose upon the other an oath of purgation, to be taken under circumstances very painful to the feelings, to remove a suspicion which might originate in unreasonable jealousy. But it must be remembered, that the idea of equality between the parties in the conjugal relation never entered into the minds of the ancients, least of all of the Orientals; and that the jealous husband would often have taken the law into his own hands and put the suspected wife to death, if this mode of satisfying his doubts had not been prescribed by the legislator. The Mosaic law did not undertake, by a perpetual miracle, to create in a barbarous age and in the bosom of the east, a people characterised by the refined humanity and respect for the rights of human nature which the influence of Christianity and centuries of improvement have produced in modern Europe, but to soften and elevate as far as possible the national character. Regarded in this light, the Mosaic law of the water of jealousy will be considered like the institution of the cities of refuge, as a humane appointment, to moderate an evil which it was impossible to eradicate. Michaelis (Mos. Law, § 263.) has shown how well the whole ceremony was adapted to strike terror into a guilty person, and prevent all but the most abandoned and hardened from attempting to perjure themselves—so that it would rarely happen that divine interposition would be called for to punish the crime. It does not appear from the law in the book of Numbers, what was, to be the punishment of the woman, if, under the influence of conscience and apprehension, she made confession. The Rabbins say that she was to be divorced; (Lightfoot, ubi supra) they also tell us that the punishment sometimes did not follow the drinking of the water for two or three years. It seems more probable, however, that it was the intention of the lawgiver, whatever the practice might be, that the woman, if she confessed, should be punished in the usual way as an adultress. See v. 31. We are told by the Rabbins that the use of this test was abolished, when the Sanhedrim lost the power of life and death. Such an _ordeal_ was indeed very abhorrent from the Roman jurisprudence. Lightfoot, Works, ii. 111. It may be observed, that the law does not require the husband to put the offering of jealousy into the wife’s hand, as represented in the text, but into the priest’s. Page 291.—_Blowing of trumpets._] The object for which this was appointed is not well ascertained, and various fanciful reasons are given by the Jews. Reland, Ant. Heb. p. 509. Perhaps it was nothing more than to mark the commencement of the civil year.