What does the Bible say about holy water?

However, this was not a matter even for the priest to judge. When the scriptural procedure was followed the whole matter was left in the hand of God, who would make manifest the woman's guilt or her innocence. Yet the man was to bring his wife to the priest as well as an offering to one-tenth of an ephah of barley meal, with no oil or frankincense as in the case of the meal offerings generally (v.15). For this was not a thank-offering, but almost the opposite. Then the priest was to take holy water in an earthen vessel and mix dust with it from the tabernacle floor. The holy water speaks of life, but the dust speaks of death (Ps.22:15). If there was no sin unto death, life would be given, but guilt would lead to death.

The offering would be put in the woman's hand and the priest would hold the bitter water, which in the case of guilt, would bring a curse. Then the priest would put her under oath. Of course, if she had confessed herself guilty before, this would not be necessary, but her oath would be to the effect that she was not guilty. She would be warned by the priest that if she was lying, the Lord would cause her thigh to rot and her belly to swell, making her a curse among the people (v.21), and she was to answer, "Amen, so be it" (v.22).

In the next paragraph concerning the wife suspected of adultery, no positive defilement or sin is in view, only the suspicion of it. A careful reading of the passage is suggested. The offering of jealousy is described in detail, but the brief character of our annotations forbids a closer examination. We can only point out that the offering consisted not of fine flour as in the meal-offering, but of barley meal, which was coarser. No leaven was mixed with it, for that would have implied before the test, the guilt of the accused woman. Nor was oil and frankincense put on the offering, no joy and worship could be connected with this offering of jealousy. Then the priest took holy water in an earthen vessel and the dust of the tabernacle floor and put it into the water. This also has a symbolical meaning. The water stands for the Word, and the dust typifies death and the curse. It was a most solemn ceremony of a searching nature. The innocent one had nothing to fear; the drinking of the bitter water that causeth the curse but resulted for her in vindication. The guilty one was found out by Jehovah and the curse rested upon her. This ordinance is also applicable to Israel as the unfaithful wife of Jehovah.

THE LAW OF JEALOUSY, when a man suspected his wife of being unfaithful to him, is given in Num. 5:11-31. The woman was required to drink bitter water, composed of 'holy water,' in which was placed dust from the floor of the tabernacle (type of the Holy Spirit applying what death is, as God's judgement of sin, by the word to the conscience). If she had been unfaithful it would be a curse to her. It pointed figuratively to the question of Israel's unfaithfulness to Jehovah.

Before this is offered, however, holy (that is, consecrated) water is put into an earthen vessel, and dust from the tabernacle floor mixed with the water. The dust is here, as usually, "the dust of death," which from the tabernacle-floor intimates that nevertheless God has come in for man. Death remains still, and as judgment to the flesh, and yet for blessing. The cross of Christ has made this familiar to us as Christians; and in it our old man is crucified with Christ, that the body of sin might be annulled, that henceforth we should not serve sin. Christ has died to sin once, and in that He liveth He liveth unto God: so are we to reckon ourselves dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God in Christ Jesus.

Nor have any pushed to greater lengths the corruption from the simplicity and the purity that is toward Christ, cloaked under the plea of development. Scripture clearly warrants the use of water in baptism, of bread and wine in the Lord's Supper. How does either give license to bring in the use of lights, incense, vestments, and the like, to say nothing of holy water? It is all impeachment of the fulness of divine wisdom in the written word of God, a presumptious uprising of the church, instead of that single-eyed obedience which is of all price in God's sight. No doubt, the O.T. is also invoked to eke out the desired end. But this is unintelligent abuse, in the face of our authoritative instruction in the N.T. which gives the key of Christ to explain the spiritual meaning of these Levitical symbols, closed for the Christian in His work and offices, as the Epistle to the Hebrews shows us. To introduce them outwardly into the Church is to Judaise in fact. When God tried by law, man rebelled and violated it; when God proved its impotence and nailed it to the cross, man cleaves to it and makes it his idol, consistent only in his antagonism to God's will and glory.

1882 148 How is it possible in the face of these Scriptures to misunderstand the meaning of water as a figure, whether with speech or action? Yet how distorted from their true use and import have the Sacraments become? — what the Lord intended for our good, turned into an almost idolatrous object of veneration and superstitious regard. Under somewhat similar circumstances Hezekiah acted well in 2 Kings 18:4. The Church of Rome, boldly, unequivocally, and consistently with itself, asserts the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, and holds that what is called "original sin" is removed by it. After the "consecration," it calls the water "holy," and attributes life-giving efficacy to its use in baptism.

For baptism the Lord gave a formula of words, not as "consecrating" the water, but as giving validity to the rite as performed in His name, and by His authority. No such fixed formula of words, but giving of thanks, attends the celebration of the Lord's Supper; for 1 Cor. 11:24, 1 Cor. 14:16-17, compared with Matt. 26:26, and with 1 Cor. 10:16, prove that eulogeo = eucharisteo and that, eulogia=eucharistia, i.e. to bless means in this case to give thanks. To quote the words of a very able writer: "The term eucharistia is used metonymically, resembling in all respects the phrase poterion eulogias, ho eulogoumen, in St. Paul=ho eucharistetheis artos kai oinos, in Justin Martyr — the bread and wine over which the prayer of thanksgiving has been pronounced. The latter says expressly that, immediately after the president of the church has pronounced this prayer of thanksgiving over the bread and wine, and the church joined in it with their amen, the sacramental elements were distributed. He mentions no other consecration." We quote this, simply as confirming what we have just stated as the teaching of Scripture, not as regarding the "Fathers" to be any authority whatever. On the contrary, it is to the Fathers we must go to find the basis of that systematic perversion of Scripture, and of that traditional and corrupted Christianity, which has existed (though with increasing departure from the truth) from the time the apostles were removed from this world; who oven, in their later writings, endeavoured to combat the tide of corruption, both of doctrine and in practice, which was then commencing to invade, as it soon overflowed, the church, to its ruin as a testimony in the world for God.

But in the course of the holy complaint and invocation of vengeance by the disowned rejected King of the Jews, set forth in that Psalm, I may observe, that He makes reference to the ordinance of the "Trial of Jealousy" (see Psalm 109:14-18, and Num. 5:23-27); and therefore as to that ordinance I would speak more particularly.

This ordinance was for the discovering of unconfessed infidelity. A suspected wife was set by the high priest in the presence of God as the Searcher of hearts. Her head was uncovered, in token that on the present occasion she knew of no subjection to any but to the Lord; and therefore she removed the covering from her head, for that covering was the sign of subjection to her husband (1 Cor. 11:3). The priest then put into her hand "the offering of jealousy." This was a meat-offering prepared by her husband, in a manner suitable to her approach to God, and which the priest afterwards took from her hand, and waved before the Lord, offering the memorial of it on the altar; by which action was signified, on both the husband's and the wife's behalf, the committal of this matter to God. Then holding in his hand a vessel containing holy water or water taken from the brazen laver mingled with dust (the sign of curse or fruit of sin; Gen. 3:19), the priest solemnly abjured the woman, and read to her the curses that would come upon her if she were guilty. To this, if she pleased to stand the trial after all this warning, she said, "Amen, Amen;" and then the priest wrote the curses in a book, blotted them with some of the bitter water, and gave the rest of it to the woman to drink. The trial was then made. If she had been unfaithful, the water would enter into her and become bitter; her belly would swell, and her thigh rot; and she would be made a curse among the people. But if her husband's suspicions had wronged her, none of these things would happen to her. For the curses in the book would all be blotted out, so as to be legible no more; and thus, being freed and avenged, she would receive strength of the Lord to conceive seed.

Now in the Psalm 109, the Lord appears as one Who had brought up Israel to this trial, and by it found her guilty. He was entitled so to bring her up for this trial, for He had of old married her (Jer. 31:32), of old had spread His skirt over Jerusalem (Ezek. 16:8), and at the time of the marriage had warned her of His holy jealousness (Ex. 20:5). And time after time subsequent to the marriage He had been provoked to jealousy, but had forborne, and been patient, calling again and again for repentance and confession (Deut. 32:21, Ezek. 8:3). But at length He pleads with her by this ordeal, while she, like any hardened wife who would dare to stand the trial with the consciousness of sin upon her, defies divine justice. "His blood be upon us and upon our children," from the lips of Israel, was as the woman's "Amen" to the invocation of the curse. But their confidence has been their shame. The sin of their mother was not blotted out in the trial (Ps. 109:14). The water entered in and did its deadly work (v. 18); and to this day they are under the penalties of convicted infidelity. Israel has been judged as a woman that breaks wedlock (Ezek. 16:38).

This may be thought to be the most dreadful heresy to believe what God the Holy Ghost says about this “perfected for ever,” by the one offering of Christ once — never to be repeated. If this be true, where is the use of the priest-associate? Where the use of your offering the awful sacrifice of the altar, standing continually offering those sacrifices, that never can take away sins? Must we reject what Christ has done, and what God says about it? And must we most humbly, and devoutly, believe in your continued, and ever repeated offering of the victim on the altar that never can take away sins? Why, if Jesus Christ be the eternal Son, and if His blood cleanses from all sin, and thus perfects the conscience for ever, what need can there be for purgatory? for holy water? for all the intercessors including even the blessed Mary as queen of heaven? But do not the inspired scriptures plainly declare this everlasting efficacy of the one offering of Christ? And does not God say, “And their sins and iniquities I will remember no more.” Oh, may I not believe God, and so enter into rest? Rest of soul to the weary is so sweet. Now does not the scripture say all this?

It was exactly so after the death of Paul and all that generation. There arose another generation that knew not the Lord and His ways, as at the beginning. Then did the devil teach the doctrine of development. But the Lord in His tender care, raised up individuals, and through them delivered the church from utter ruin, by the loss of all truth. But for centuries Christ is never again known and owned as the true Shiloh. Nay, a man is blasphemously put in His place as the centre and head of the church. And even at the Reformation none of the reformers, so far as we have any record, ever recovered the long lost and only true position of the church as gathered to Him "whose it is!" They did escape from much of paganism, but never knew Christ as the only true centre, around which the two or three should be gathered in perfect tranquillity. For the most part they retained the worldly nationalism, or Babylonian principle, of confusing the church with the world. It is remarkable, that the very same idolatry has prevailed in Christendom, as in Israel during its centuries of darkness. Observance of days, turning to the east, worship of the queen of heaven, images of saints, as formerly Jupiter, Ashtaroth, &c.; monks, nuns, candles, holy water, &c. &c.; all these are real paganism — idolatry, so denounced in the word of God.