Keeping G‑d’s Family Clean

      This Torah portion continues to lay out G‑d's pattern for Israel's spiritual life. The L‑rd gives some commandments that sound strange to our 2000-year-old+ ears—the quarantine of lepers, people with bodily discharges and those who have contact with the dead. These people were declared unclean and forbidden to participate in the corporate life of Israel until they became ritually clean (read more about this in Leviticus 15). Yet, there is much more here than meets the eye; ritual (or physical) purity is only one piece of the overall picture. The L‑rd wanted His people to be pure—morally and ceremonially. The next section of chapter 5, (vv. 5-31) zooms in on that which is most crucial to the L‑rd.

      We begin with the need to restore relationships that have been bruised by one party sinning against the other—restitution has to be made in full (see Leviticus 5:14-19 for a fuller discussion of this). Life cannot go on as if nothing had happened. Next, we come to a specific issue (one that is very relevant today)—purity of the marriage bed. Why is only the unfaithfulness of the wife dealt with here? There are a couple of facts we need to remember:

1.    Elsewhere in the Torah, adultery by both a husband and wife are addressed. The L‑rd makes it clear that whoever defiles the marriage bed will be punished.

2.    What is at stake here is protection for wives from unjust suspicion by their husbands. In other cultures in those days, husbands had almost unlimited power over their wives. We need to remember that this is a case where there was no proof of unfaithfulness, just suspicion.

      The most important consideration is the L‑rd's requirement for His people to be pure—not the husband's particular feelings about his wife. Yet, if the husband does have reasonable doubts, rather than "stuff them" and become bitter, he needs to bring the matter before the L‑rd. The L‑rd promises that He will flush out the adultery if it was committed. The procedure (called "Trial of Jealousy") seems harsh and humiliating, but remember that the alternative, if a petty husband had his way, was much worse. What's more, if the woman was innocent, she was vindicated; if she was guilty, her sin was purged from G‑d's family.