Jealousy, Waters of

The waters of jealousy (or "bitter water") were the ceremonial drink prescribed in Numbers 5:17–27 for the ordeal of a woman accused of adultery by her jealous husband but without witnesses. The priest took holy water in an earthen vessel, mixed it with dust from the tabernacle floor, wrote the curses on a scroll and washed the ink into the water, then made the woman drink it. The Hebrew phrase mê hammārîm means "bitter waters" or "waters of testing." If the woman was guilty, the water would cause physical harm; if innocent, she would be unharmed. The ritual served as a divinely supervised legal mechanism ensuring that neither innocent women nor the covenant community would suffer injustice when human evidence was unavailable.