Day 2411 – Theology Thursday –Love Potion: Number 5 – I Dare You Not To Bore Me With The Bible

Welcome to Day 2411 of Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me. This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom – Theology Thursday – Love Potion: Number 5 – I Dare You Not To Bore Me With The Bible Wisdom-Trek Podcast Script - Day 2411 Welcome to Wisdom-Trek with Gramps! I am Guthrie Chamberlain, and we are on Day 2411 of our Trek. The Purpose of Wisdom-Trek is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, and to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before.   Today is the twelfth lesson in our segment, Theology Thursday. Utilizing excerpts from a book titled: I Dare You Not To Bore Me With The Bible written by Hebrew Bible scholar and professor the late Dr. Michael S Heiser, we will invest a couple of years going through the entire Bible, exploring short Biblical lessons that you may not have received in Bible classes or Church. The Bible is a wonderful book. Its pages reveal the epic story of God’s redemption of humankind and the long, bitter conflict against evil. Yet it’s also a book that seems strange to us. While God’s Word was written for us, it wasn’t written to us. Today, our lesson is, Love Potion: Number 5. When was the last time you heard a sermon on Numbers 5:11-31? One of the things I enjoy telling people in conversations about Bible study is that “if it’s weird, it’s important.” This passage certainly qualifies in both respects. The strangeness of the passage is easily detectable, but only careful Bible study makes its importance apparent. Numbers 5:11-31 describes a water ritual to determine the guilt or innocence of a woman suspected of adultery. A husband is to bring the wife under suspicion to the priest, along with a required grain offering that will “bring iniquity to remembrance.” The priest, in turn, prepares a jar of water mixed with dust from the Tabernacle (5:16-17). To this mixture is added the curses against her written “in a book” (5:23). Either the curses were written and erased, so that the erasures are swept into the water mixture, or the ink is washed off into the water mixture. The woman is compelled to drink the concoction after saying “Amen, Amen” in response to the priest’s invocation of blessing or cursing upon her, depending on her innocence or guilt. If she is guilty, the ingested mixture will cause pain and sterility; if there is no such reaction, she is deemed innocent (5:27-31). Since the instructions in Numbers 5 were given by God (5:11), the water ordeal is a means of divination, whereby it is expected that God will use the ritual to answer a question human beings cannot. That the Israelites could use such divination comes as no surprise, as the high priest had the Urim and Thummim at his disposal, and various biblical characters utilize the casting of lots for discerning the mind of God on a matter (Josh 18:6-8: Prov 16:33: Acts 1:26). This passage provides a useful starting point for discussing why biblical characters were permitted to practice divination at all, when elsewhere such methods are condemned (e.g., Deut 18:9-14). But let’s instead focus on one practical implication of this passage. Students of the Bible know that adultery was punishable by death in ancient Israel (Lev...