Old Testament

New Testament

Numbers 5:2-18 Good News Bible Catholic Edition (GNBDK)

2. “Command the people of Israel to expel from the camp everyone with a dreaded skin disease or a bodily discharge and everyone who is unclean by contact with a corpse.

3. Send all these ritually unclean people out, so that they will not defile the camp, where I live among my people.”

4. The Israelites obeyed and expelled them all from the camp.

5. The Lord gave Moses

6. the following instructions for the people of Israel. When anyone is unfaithful to the Lord and commits a wrong against someone,

7. he must confess his sin and make full repayment, plus an additional twenty per cent, to the person he has wronged.

8. But if that person has died and has no near relative to whom payment can be made, it shall be given to the Lord for the priest. This payment is in addition to the ram used to perform the ritual of purification for the guilty person.

9. Also every special contribution which the Israelites offer to the Lord belongs to the priest to whom they present it.

10. Each priest shall keep the offerings presented to him.

11. The Lord commanded Moses

12-14. to give the Israelites the following instructions. It may happen that a man becomes suspicious that his wife is unfaithful to him and has defiled herself by having intercourse with another man. But the husband may not be certain, for his wife may have kept it secret — there was no witness, and she was not caught in the act. Or it may happen that a husband becomes suspicious of his wife, even though she has not been unfaithful.

15. In either case the man shall take his wife to the priest. He shall also take the required offering of one kilogramme of barley flour, but he shall not pour any olive oil on it or put any incense on it, because it is an offering from a suspicious husband, made to bring the truth to light.

16. The priest shall bring the woman forward and make her stand in front of the altar.

17. He shall pour some holy water into a clay bowl and take some of the earth that is on the floor of the Tent of the Lord's presence and put it in the water to make it bitter.

18. Then he shall loosen the woman's hair and put the offering of flour in her hands. In his hands the priest shall hold the bowl containing the bitter water that brings a curse.

Read complete chapter Numbers 5