Latest / Lamp and Light Bible Reading Plan / May 22, 2026 - Numbers 5 & Psalm 111

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May 22, 2026 - Numbers 5 & Psalm 111 · Lamp and Light Bible Reading Plan

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Lamp and Light Bible Reading Plan, where we are seeking to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength with God's word lighting the way.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Josiah Smith, joined by Tyler Sanborn.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Today is Friday, May 22nd, 2026.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Listen intently to God's written word.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Numbers five.
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  SPEAKER_01: The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Command the people of Israel that they put out of the camp everyone who is leprous, or as a discharge, and everyone who is unclean through contact with the dead.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: You shall put out both male and female, putting them outside the camp, that they may not defile their camp in the midst of which I dwell.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: And the people of Israel did so, and put them outside the camp, as the Lord said to Moses, so the people of Israel did.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the people of Israel, when a man or a woman commits any of the sins that people commit, by breaking faith with the Lord, and that person realizes his guilt, he shall confess his sin that he has committed, and he shall make full restitution for his wrong, adding a fifth to it, and giving it to him to whom he did the wrong.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: But if the man has no next of kin to whom restitution may be made for the wrong, the restitution for wrong shall go to the Lord for the priest, in addition to the ram of atonement with which atonement is made for him, and every contribution, all the holy donations of the people of Israel, which they bring to the priest, shall be his.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Each one shall keep his holy donations, whatever any one gives to the priest shall be his.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the people of Israel, if any man's wife goes astray and breaks faith with him, if a man lies with her sexually, and it is hidden from the eyes of her husband, and she is undetected, though she has defiled herself, and there is no witness against her, since she was not taken in the act, and if the spirit of jealousy comes over him, and he is jealous of his wife who has defiled herself, or if the spirit of jealousy comes over him, and he is jealous of his wife, though she has not defiled herself, then the man shall bring his wife to the priest, and bring the offering required of her, a tenth of an ephah of barley flour, he shall pour no oil on it, and put no frankincense on it, for it is a grain offering of jealousy, a grain offering of remembrance, bringing iniquity to remembrance.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: And the priest shall bring her near and set her before the Lord, and the priest shall take holy water in an earthenware vessel, and take some of the dust that is on the floor of the tabernacle, and put it into the water.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: And the priest shall set the woman before the Lord, and unbind the hair of the woman's head, and place in her hands the grain offering of remembrance, which is the grain offering of jealousy, and in his hand the priest shall have the water of bitterness that brings the curse.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: Then the priest shall make her take an oath, saying, If no man has lain with you, and if you have not turned aside to uncleanness while you were under your husband's authority, be free from this water of bitterness that brings the curse.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: But if you have gone astray, though you are under your husband's authority, and if you have defiled yourself, and some man other other than your husband has lain with you, then let the priest make the woman take the oath of the curse and say to the woman, The Lord make you a curse and an oath among your people, when the Lord makes your thigh fall away and your body swell.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: May this water that brings the curse pass into your boughs, and make your wounds swell, and your thigh fall away, and the woman shall say, Amen, amen.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Then the priest shall write these curses in a book and wash them off into the water of bitterness.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: And you shall make the woman drink the water of bitterness that brings the curse, and the water that brings the curse shall enter into her and cause bitter pain.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: And the priest shall take the grain offering of jealousy out of the woman's hand, and shall wave the grain offering before the Lord and bring it to the altar.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: And the priest shall take a handful of the grain offering as its memorial portion, and burn it on the altar, and afterward shall make the woman drink the water.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: And when he has made her drink the water, then if she has defiled herself and has broken faith with her husband, the water that brings the curse shall enter into her and cause bitter pain, and her womb shall swell, and her thigh shall fall away, and the woman shall become a curse among her people.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: But if the woman is not defiled herself and is clean, then she shall be free and shall conceive children.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: This is the law in case of jealousy, when a wife, though under her husband's authority, goes astray and defiles herself, or when the spirit of jealousy comes over a man and he is jealous of his wife, then he shall set the woman before the Lord, and the priest shall carry out for her all this law.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: The man shall be free from iniquity, but the woman shall bear her iniquity.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Praise the Lord.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart, in the company of the upright in the congregation.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them, full of splendor and majesty is his work, and his righteousness endures forever.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: He has caused his wondrous works to be remembered.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord is gracious and merciful.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: He provides food for those who fear him.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: He remembers his covenant forever.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: He has shown his people the power of his works in giving them the inheritance of the nations.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: The works of his hands are faithful and just.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: All his precepts are trustworthy.
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  SPEAKER_00: They are established forever and ever, to be performed with faithfulness and uprightness.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: He sent redemption to his people, he has commanded his covenant forever.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Holy and awesome is his name.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
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  SPEAKER_00: All those who practice it have a good understanding.
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  SPEAKER_00: His praise endures forever.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, numbers five perhaps contains one of the most strange passages in all the Bible.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's a lot of strange passages in the Bible.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of things that feel very foreign to us, distant to certainly our circumstances in a modern day context here in the West in America.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: But numbers five, Tyler.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: I was squirming in my chair a little bit.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: I was I was imagining drinking muddy, dirty water with with ink mixed in.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: I was trying to imagine myself witnessing this account as we see um women standing before a priest and taking a test.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: In Numbers chapter five, draws my attention to God's standards and his expectation for his people to be set apart and pure.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so let's let's unpack this a little bit.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: A test for adultery is what my Bible says, the heading for this section in Numbers 5, beginning in verse 11.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: And it's this whole sort of trial that happens with a woman that is suspected of adultery.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is rooted in really one of the foundational principles within the Old Testament law, which was the evidence of two or three witnesses.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so you could think of this, I think properly so, as actually a protection for the woman that her husband cannot simply just accuse her of adultery, maybe even on just grounds.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe he witnesses it or uh catches her in the act, as it kind of describes here in Numbers five.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but he simply cannot just take her to the authorities, as it were, and have justice enacted.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: He needs uh two or three witnesses.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: Now, what's unique about adultery is that the nature of the sin, the nature of the offense is perhaps more private, more intimate than a lot of other sins would be.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so there's a there's a hiddenness to adultery.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Typically, even when you're having a physical relationship with your spouse, right, you're doing it within the hiddenness, so to speak, of your home, right?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: Of a place, uh as Hebrews talks about, like the marriage bed that is to be undefiled.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so this can be somewhat tricky to have two or three witnesses to this kind of sin.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so this actually serves as a protection for uh the women of Israel, that their husbands simply, if if they just for whatever reason um were upset with them, couldn't throw them to the wolves.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so actually the the court of law that the woman submits herself to is God Himself.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think there's a comfort there uh that God will judge justly and perfectly, especially those women that are innocent, they will be found innocent, and there there will be a 100% rate of accuracy to that declaration of innocence.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: Now, on the flip side, again, because of that that command and that demand of two to three witnesses, um, the the Lord stands as a witness in conjunction in the sense uh of her husband, in the same way as her husband, I should say.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: Her husband accuses, that's a witness.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then the Lord and the priest in that sense is also so we have three technically that are all kind of involved in this, if the woman is actually an adulterer.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so this is sometimes referred to as trial by ordeal.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: Now we sometimes we use the word ordeal as in dramatic or something like that.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: But no, that that's a that's a term that if you read some of the commentaries, some of the the scholar, scholarly works on Numbers chapter five, they call it trial by ordeal because this is there's there's more things going on than a typical trial, even within the context of Israel.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, there's a there's a mixture being made.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the the thing that that she is supposed to drink, the water of bitterness, uh, she she enters before the priest, she does, she offers a grain offering.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: There is a lot more steps involved in this uh than a typical trial.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: So trial trial by ordeal is one of the ways that this is categorized.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, if she is found out by drinking uh the mixture that the priest prepares to be an adulteress, that that that is the verdict.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that because of course God sees all, he knows all, and his verdicts are always 100% accurate.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: If she is found to be guilty, there are some immediate, very serious consequences.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where we have the swelling of the thigh, the the shriveling of uh really the the womb and the uterus, it kind of talks about.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um the Lord, even I'm looking in verse 21, it says the Lord make you a curse and an oath among your people when the Lord makes your thigh fall away and your body swell.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: So there seems to be some sort of uh disfigurement with the body.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know exactly what that looked like, but the main emphasis seems to be on uh the lack of being able to bear children in the future.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so this is a serious and it seems like lifelong um sort of consequence that bears itself out, whether it's an obvious disfigurement that becomes publicly known uh and or just the lack of being able to have children moving forward.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: This is a lifelong thing that the woman who is found guilty has to carry with her.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: So very severe.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: And Tyler, I know that you were talking about you were reading just some connections to Genesis three.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Talk about that a little bit.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, PJ, one of the connections that uh commentator was was noticing was the the language in Genesis three.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the snake uh is to crawl on its belly.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, curse obviously is a big um a big term in Genesis three and also in Numbers five.
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  SPEAKER_00: Uh but also there's this connection to dust, and the serpent is commanded uh to crawl on its belly and eat dust.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: And from the the tabernacle uh floors, they are collecting dust and adding it to this mixture of water, and that is the test that the woman would take to drink this mixture of uh of of ink and dust and water, and if she is innocent, we see in verse 28.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: But if the woman has not defiled herself and is clean, meaning she is uh she is free from this accusation, it did not happen, then shall she shall be free and shall conceive children.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: To the the point that you were talking about, there's this connection between childbearing.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, if if the woman is in fact guilty of adultery, uh sleeping with uh another man who is not her husband, uh, she is not going to be having children in the future.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that is a step further of the curse where there's pain in childbearing, there is no children at all.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that is in itself a painful thing for any mother to not um to not have the ability or capability to to um to have children, to bear children.
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  SPEAKER_00: And though there is pain, there is a great joy that comes from that, and that joy is removed from this woman.
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  SPEAKER_01: Now we need to remember the context that this law and this trial by ordeal is given.
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  SPEAKER_01: The family, of course, we even talk about in America how the family is the the basic building block of society.
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  SPEAKER_01: Um that seems more or less in terms of how it actually plays out in society, like an ideal, something that we maybe a value that is held to rather than the actual structure of society itself.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: But in Israel, this was legitimately stitched into their society.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: So their clans, their land allotments, their inheritances, all of that was connected to the family line.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: And if a woman is can is is you know committing adultery and conceiving uh from other men outside of her husband, there's a real sense in which all of that gets muddy, becomes unclear.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you've seen in the Old Testament, Tyler, just how often these uh even in Numbers chapter one, there's a census.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: We have names of fathers and then their children, and then the children inherit from their fathers.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so if there's children that are outside of the marriage union of the covenant, then literally the way that their whole society functions, their livelihoods, um, again, their land allotments, which are connected even to where they camp in in uh around the tabernacle, all of that becomes just discombobulated.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: It becomes um it really un undoes and un sort of tethers the way that their whole society operates.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a very severe, very um serious thing.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why it is dealt with in the way that it is, just the way that their society was composed, uh the way that it functioned, the values that they had.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, it functions very differently from what we see here in value in America.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: And as Christians, of course, we're always going to say that the family is one of the building blocks of society, um, but not in the same way, right?
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh parents die all the time and don't leave their things, their retirement plans, their houses, their whatever to their children.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's more of a normal thing in the world that we live in.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: That would have been unfathomable in uh this context.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why, even uh being cut off from the covenant community and losing your land allotments, losing your future posterity through your future kids and all that kinds of stuff was such a severe punishment for breaking the covenant of God because this was the center of their society.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: So uh, because the women bore a unique responsibility in actually bearing children, and they're the ones that obviously carry children and deliver children, there was a unique sort of trial by ordeal that had to be implemented by God and his wisdom to maintain the structure of Israel's society in the order that God uh just ordered everything, even from where the tabernacle was to be placed to where the Levites were to camp, to where every other tribe and clan was to camp, with Judah, of course, being at the head.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: All of that was organized by family, by lineage, by clan.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: And again, that all gets messed up if adultery is brought in and kids are, you know, and even you think about a woman potentially having a kid from someone that's not her husband and maybe not telling her husband, and all of that, right, just gets really it it unravels society as Israel is set up by God.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a severity to it, and it makes us perhaps uncomfortable, but that's what we see here in numbers five and the wisdom of the Lord, just ordering his society and making sure, or Israel as a society, and making sure that they are set apart, that they are holy, that they are distinct from the pagan nations that were just willy-nilly with a lot of their sexual relationships and their marriages, of course.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: And God says, No, you will be uh different, you will be set apart, consecrated, sanctified.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: And as a result of that, we see this sort of uh trial by ordeal where there is a water of bitterness that the woman ingests.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: And if she's guilty, uh there is some serious consequences, uh, the loss of being able to bear children, which is a heritage and a blessing from the Lord, uh, even a more physical, perhaps more permanent sign on the body that is just an always sort of ever-present reminder of the breaking of the covenant.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I would even say, I don't want to belabor this, but I'm just thinking about the thigh.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, as we've been reading in Genesis and in Exodus, uh, there's been a couple of instances where covenants are made with hands being placed under thighs.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's this connection to a woman has violated a sacred covenant, not just with her husband, but before the Lord.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that covenant doesn't just affect them individually, as we we might often feel within our families here in America, that covenant within their family affects, of course, their covenant with God and their covenant with the whole nation.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so, as a result of that, there's some serious consequences.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: And we see, of course, the waters of bitterness and just the trial by ordeal.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: So that's numbers five.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: Lots going on there.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but let's let's transition to Psalm 101.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: Tyler, what do you got for us there?
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm just uh I'm struck by the way that the focus of this psalm is putting a great emphasis on God causing, God causing his wondrous works to be remembered.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: And as a person that if I don't write things down, I can I can forget, I can um misremember details at times.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: And as I'm thinking about the this psalm, I'm I'm just thankful that God brings to mind, God causes his people to remember.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that that's a great comfort and an encouragement to me as I uh reflect back on what God has done in uh in his word through the scriptures and the old testament uh in my life and and uh the things that God has done, the the mighty works that he has done, with the the climax of that being the cross of Calvary, what Jesus has done for sinners.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, amen to that.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I just want to say quickly for verse one, where it says, Praise the Lord, I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: I just wrote in my Bible the phrase biblical sincerity.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think this is something that we need to think about perhaps more often than we do, that God calls us to a sincerity in our pursuit of Him, to praise Him, to give thanks to Him with our whole heart.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: A sincere heart is a whole heart where we are holistically with all of what we have, with um our heart, soul, mind, and strength, thanking the Lord, praising the Lord.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so um let's let's seek to grow in biblical sincerity where from a whole, full heart we are seeking to praise the Lord even together as a church family.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you so much for joining us today on the Lamp and Light Bible Reading Podcast.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: For more information about Compass Bible Church South Valley, visit compass Bible SV.org.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: Keep reading, keep growing.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: God's word is a lamp to your feet and a light to your path.