LAW OF JEALOUSY. - According to the law contained in Num. 5:11 ff., a husband who harbors suspicions regarding his wife's fidelity, suspicions not corroborated by any testimony, brings the woman to the priest, bearing an offering for the evocation of the possible guilt.
The oblation consists of barley flour only. The priest pours holy water into an earthenware vessel and adds to it dust from the ground of the tabernacle (thus itself rich in social forces). Then he has the woman come forward, loosens her hair, and places the flour in her hands, while he holds the vessel with the water. The woman pronounces the formula of self-imprecation in case she should be guilty. In case of guilt - so the priest - "may the Lord make you an object of imprecation and execration in the midst of your people, by causing your thigh to fall and your belly to swell." The woman answers: "Amen, amen." The priest then transcribes the curses onto a sheet and dissolves them "in the bitter water of malediction." The priest burns a handful of the barley on the altar as a fragrance ("azkārāh and evocation") and then makes the woman drink the water.
Bibliography
1876, pp. 35-72; A. Wendel, Das Opfer, in Die edizierolische
Religion, Leipzig 1927, p. 121; E. Zolli, Israele, Udine 1935, p. 238
ff.; R. Pettizzoni, La confusione dei peccati, II, Bologna 1935,
pp. 139-62; M. W. Rapoport, Eiferscasser, in Jüdisches Lexikon,
II, pp. 299-300; La S. Bibbia... edited by the Fond. ist. bibl.,
I, Florence 1942, pp. 355-57.
Eugenio Zolli