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Easton's Bible Dictionary
Conjugal infidelity. An adulterer was a man who had illicit
intercourse with a married or a betrothed woman, and such a woman was an adulteress.
Intercourse between a married man and an unmarried woman was fornication. Adultery
was regarded as a great social wrong, as well as a great sin.
The Mosaic law ( Numbers 5:11 - 31 ) prescribed that the suspected wife should
be tried by the ordeal of the "water of jealousy." There is, however, no recorded
instance of the application of this law. In subsequent times the Rabbis made various
regulations with the view of discovering the guilty party, and of bringing about
a divorce. It has been inferred from John 8:1-11 that this sin became very common
during the age preceding the destruction of Jerusalem.
Idolatry, covetousness, and apostasy are spoken of as adultery spiritually ( Jeremiah
3:6 , 3:8 , 3:9 ; Ezekiel 16:32 ; Hosea 1:2 - 3 ; Revelation 2:22 ). An apostate
church is an adulteress ( Isaiah 1:21 ; 23:4 , 23:7 , 23:37 ), and the Jews are
styled "an adulterous generation" ( Matthew 12:39 ). (Compare Revelation 12 .)
Hitchcock's Dictionary of Bible Names
(no entry)
Smith's Bible Dictionary
( Exodus 20:14 ) The parties to this crime, according
to Jewish law, were a married woman and a man who was not her husband. The Mosaic
penalty was that both the guilty parties should be stoned, and it applied as well
to the betrothed as to the married woman, provided she were free. ( Deuteronomy
22:22 - 24 ) A bondwoman so offending was to be scourged, and the man was to make
a trespass offering. ( Leviticus 19:20 - 22 ) At a later time, and when owing,
to Gentile example, the marriage tie became a looser bond of union, public feeling
in regard to adultery changed, and the penalty of death was seldom or never inflicted.
The famous trial by the waters of jealousy, ( Numbers 5:11 - 29 ) was probably
an ancient custom, which Moses found deeply seated --(But this ordeal was wholly
in favor of the innocent, and exactly opposite to most ordeals. For the water
which the accused drank was perfectly harmless, and only by a miracle could it
produce a bad effect; while in most ordeals the accused must suffer what naturally
produces death, and be proved innocent only by a miracle. Symbolically adultery
is used to express unfaithfulness to covenant vows to God, who is represented
as the husband of his people.)
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
a-dul'-ter-i:
In Scripture designates sexual intercourse of a man, whether married or unmarried,
with a married woman.
1. Its Punishment:
It is categorically prohibited in the Decalogue (seventh commandment, Exodus 20:14
; Deuteronomy 5:18): "Thou shalt not commit adultery." In more specific language
we read: "And thou shalt not he carnally with thy neighbor's wife, to defile thyself
with her" (Leviticus 18:20). The penalty is death for both guilty parties: "And
the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth
adultery with his neighbor's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely
be put to death" (Leviticus 20:10). The manner of death is not particularized;
according to the rabbis (Siphra' at the place; Sanhedhrin 52b) it is strangulation.
It would seem that in the days of Jesus the manner of death was interpreted to
mean stoning ("Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such," John 8:5, said
of the woman taken in adultery). Nevertheless, it may be said that in the case
in question the woman may have been a virgin betrothed unto a husband, the law
(in Deuteronomy 22:23 f) providing that such a person together with her paramour
be stoned to death (contrast Deuteronomy 22:22, where a woman married to a husband
is spoken of and the manner of death is again left general). Ezekiel 16:40 (compare
23:47) equally mentions stoning as the penalty of the adulteress; but it couples
to her sin also that of shedding blood; hence, the rabbinic interpretation is
not necessarily disputed by the prophet. Of course it may also be assumed that
a difference of custom may have obtained at different times and that the progress
was in the line of leniency, strangulation being regarded as a more humane form
of execution than stoning.
2. Trial by Ordeal:
The guilty persons become amenable to the death penalty only when taken "in the
very act" (John 8:4). The difficulty of obtaining direct legal evidence is adverted
to by the rabbis (see Makkoth 7a). In the case of a mere suspicion on the part
of the husband, not substantiated by legal evidence, the woman is compelled by
the law (Numbers 5:11-30) to submit to an ordeal, or God's judgment, which consists
in her drinking the water of bitterness, that is, water from the holy basin mingled
with dust from the floor of the sanctuary and with the washed-off ink of a writing
containing the oath which the woman has been made to repeat. The water is named
bitter with reference to its effects in the case of the woman's guilt; on the
other hand, when no ill effects follow, the woman is proved innocent and the husband's
jealousy unsubstantiated. According to the Mishna (SoTah 9) this ordeal of the
woman suspected of adultery was abolished by Johanan ben Zaccai (after 70 AD),
on the ground that the men of his generation were not above the suspicion of impurity.
See article \BITTER\, \BITTERNESS\.
3. A Heinous Crime:
Adultery was regarded as a heinous crime (Job 31:11). The prophets and teachers
in Israel repeatedly upbraid the men and women of their generations for their
looseness in morals which did not shrink from adulterous connections. Naturally
where luxurious habits of life were indulged in, particularly in the large cities,
a tone of levity set in: in the dark of the evening, men, with their features
masked, waited at their neighbors' doors (Job 24:15 ; 31:9 ; compare Proverbs
2:17). The prophet Nathan confronted David after his sin with Bathsheba, the wife
of Uriah, with his stern rebuke ("Thou art the man," 2 Samuel 12:7); the penitential
psalm (Psalms 51)--"Miserere"--was sung by the royal bard as a prayer for divine
pardon. Promiscuous intercourse with their neighbors' wives is laid by Jeremiah
at the door of the false prophets of his day (Jeremiah 23:10 , 14 ; 29:23).
4. Penal and Moral Distinctions:
While penal law takes only cognizance of adulterous relations, it is needless
to say that the moral law discountenances all manner of illicit intercourse and
all manner of unchastity in man and woman. While the phrases "harlotry," "commit
harlotry," in Scripture denote the breach of wedlock (on the part of a woman),
in the rabbinical writings a clear distinction is made on the legal side between
adultery and fornication. The latter is condemned morally in no uncertain terms;
the seventh commandment is made to include all manner of fornication. The eye
and the heart are the two intermediaries of sin (Palestinian Talmud, Berakhoth
6b). A sinful thought is as wicked as a sinful act (Niddah 13b and elsewhere).
Job makes a covenant with his eyes lest he look upon a virgin (Job 31:1). And
so Jesus who came "not to destroy, but to fulfill" (Matthew 5:17), in full agreement
with the ethical and religious teaching of Judaism, makes the intent of the seventh
commandment explicit when he declares that "every one that looketh on a woman
to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already In his heart" (Matthew
5:28). And in the spirit of Hosea (Hosea 4:15) and Johanan ben Zaccai (see above)
Jesus has but scorn for those that are ready judicially to condemn though they
be themselves not free from sin! "He that is without sin among you, let him first
cast a stone at her" (John 8:7). Whereas society is in need of the death penalty
to secure the inviolability of the home life, Jesus bids the erring woman go her
way and sin no more. How readily His word might be taken by the unspiritual to
imply the condoning of woman's peccability is evidenced by the fact that the whole
section (John 7:53 - 8:11) is omitted by "most ancient authorities" (see Augustine's
remark).
5. A Ground of Divorce:
Adultery as a ground of divorce. --The meaning of the expression "some unseemly
thing" (Deuteronomy 24:1) being unclear, there was great variety of opinion among
the rabbis as to the grounds upon which a husband may divorce his wife. While
the school of Hillel legally at least allowed any trivial reason as a ground for
divorce, the stricter interpretation which limited it to adultery alone obtained
in the school of Shammai. Jesus coincided with the stricter view (see Matthew
5:32; 19:9, and commentaries). From a moral point of view, divorce was discountenanced
by the rabbis likewise, save of course for that one ground which indeed makes
the continued relations between husband and wife a moral impossibility. See also
\CRIMES; DIVORCE IN THE NEW TESTAMENT\; \DIVORCE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT\.
Max L. Margolis
Tags:
adultery, bible commentary, bible history, bible reference, bible study, fornication vs. adultery, infidelity
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