Reading portions of the Scriptures each week gets me to thinking.  We had an excellent class Saturday morning and an excellent teacher who planned to get us to think about how reading Numbers 4-5 would enable us to see how time and understanding have rendered a difficult portion to be seen as lessening patriarchal language that can only be described as offensive in the treatment of women.

A case in point is the expiation of an unfaithful wife accused by a man.  There is a description of how she can be brought back into the society of a people who value peace in the home higher than most other aspects of human intercourse.  Priestly ritual includes making the accused woman drink “water of bitterness” that was mixed with dirt and words including the name of God scraped from parchment and, of course, public shame.

To me this seemed very much like the treatment of accused witches who were bound with weights and thrown into a moving stream.  If the alleged witch floated she was guilty of witchcraft and executed most likely by being burned at the stake. If she stayed under the water and drowned, she was innocent - but dead.

Such antiquities and inequities are read on occasion throughout the year because they make up the history of the thinking of our ancestors.  We have come a long way since then but in many ways we still have the prejudices and the practices that condemn women to suffer from inequality. Ours is still a patriarchal society.

I do not think the point was made that we have made much progress.  We HAVE come a long way but even today there is no true equality between the sexes.  What he did have to say about the importance of other things in the text did make a great deal of sense to me.  Peace in the house is a very desirable thing to try to establish and maintain.  It is clear to me that “hanky-panky” by either the man OR the woman should be equally dangerous. The sole responsibility for peace at home does not rest only on the woman who must be pure. Everyone in old societies and in the present world knows that men provide most cases of infidelity and ruination of that peace in the home.

We discussed for only a short while that that ancients did not know much about psychology.  I beg to differ.  The striking example is that of Solomon who offered to cut a disputed baby in half to satisfy two women contending having given it birth.  The wise king is reputed to realize that the real mother would give that child up in order to let it live.  Our ancestors were quite wise but forcing a woman to drink dirty water probably was never used although we dutifully read about it today. Learning takes thinking and I think THINKING should be ALLOWED.