On this law of Moses, Michaëlis has the following remarks:--
“This oath was, perhaps, a relic of some more severe and barbarous consuetudinary laws, whose rigours Moses mitigated; as he did in many other cases, where an established usage could not be conveniently abolished altogether. Among ourselves, in barbarous times, the _ordeal_, or trial by fire, was, notwithstanding the parity of our married people, in common use; and this, in point of equity, was much the same in effect, as if the husband had had the right to insist on his wife submitting to the hazardous trial of her purity, by drinking a poisoned potion; which, according to an ancient superstition, could never hurt her if she was innocent. And, in fact, such a right is not altogether unexampled; for, according to Oldendorp’s _History of the Mission of the Evangelical Brethren, in the Caribbee Islands_, it is actually in use among some of the savage nations in the interior parts of Western Africa.
“Now, when in place of a poisoned potion like this, which very few husbands can be very willing to have administered to their wives, we see, as among the Hebrews, an imprecation-drink, whose avenger God himself promises to become, we cannot but be struck with the contrast of wisdom and clemency which such a contrivance manifests. In the one case, (and herein consists their great distinction,) innocence can only be preserved by a miracle; while, on the other, guilt only is revealed and punished by the hand of God himself.
“By one of the clauses of the oath of purgation, (and had not the legislator been perfectly assured of his divine mission, the insertion of any such clause would have been a very bold step indeed,) a visible and corporeal punishment was specified, which the person swearing imprecated on herself, and which God himself was understood as engaging to execute. To have given so accurate a definition of the punishment that God meant to inflict, and still more one that consisted of such a rare disease, would have been a step of incomprehensible boldness in a legislator who pretended to have a divine mission, if he was not, with the most assured conviction, conscious of its reality.
“Seldom, however, very seldom, was it likely that Providence would have an opportunity of inflicting the punishment in question. For the oath was so regulated, that a woman of the utmost effrontery could scarcely have taken it without changing colour to such a degree as to betray herself.