Leviticus 20:10

20:10 If a man ¹  commits adultery with his neighbor’s wife, ²  both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.

Numbers 5:22-27

5:22 and this water that causes the curse will go ³  into your stomach, and make your abdomen swell and your thigh rot.” ⁴  Then the woman must say, “Amen, amen.” ⁵ 

5:23 “‘Then the priest will write these curses on a scroll and then scrape them off into the bitter water. ⁶  5:24 He will make the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and the water that brings a curse will enter her to produce bitterness. 5:25 The priest will take the grain offering of suspicion from the woman’s hand, wave the grain offering before the Lord, and bring it to the altar. 5:26 Then the priest will take a handful of the grain offering as its memorial portion, burn it on the altar, and afterward make the woman drink the water. 5:27 When he has made her drink the water, then, if she has defiled herself and behaved unfaithfully toward her husband, the water that brings a curse will enter her to produce bitterness – her abdomen will swell, her thigh will fall away, and the woman will become a curse among her people.

Ezekiel 23:45-47

23:45 But upright men will punish them appropriately for their adultery and bloodshed, ⁷  because they are adulteresses and blood is on their hands.

23:46 “For this is what the sovereign Lord says: Bring up an army ⁸  against them and subject them ⁹  to terror and plunder. 23:47 That army will pelt them with stones and slash them with their swords; they will kill their sons and daughters and burn their houses. ¹⁰ 

John 8:4-5

8:4 and said to Jesus, ¹¹  “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of adultery. 8:5 In the law Moses commanded us to stone to death ¹²  such women. ¹³  What then do you say?”

Hebrews 13:4

13:4 Marriage must be honored among all and the marriage bed kept undefiled, for God will judge sexually immoral people and adulterers.

¹ tn Heb “And a man who.” The syntax here and at the beginning of the following verses elliptically mirrors that of v. 9, which justifies the rendering as a conditional clause.

² tc The reading of the LXX minuscule mss has been followed here (see the BHS footnote a-a). The MT has a dittography, repeating “a man who commits adultery with the wife of” (see the explanation in J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 328). The duplication found in the MT is reflected in some English versions, e.g., KJV, ASV, NASB, NIV.

³ tn The verb is the perfect tense with vav (ו) consecutive. It could be taken as a jussive following the words of the priest in the previous section, but it is more likely to be a simple future.

⁴ tn Heb “fall away.”

⁵ tn The word “amen” carries the idea of “so be it,” or “truly.” The woman who submits to this test is willing to have the test demonstrate the examination of God.

⁶ sn The words written on the scroll were written with a combination of ingredients mixed into an ink. The idea is probably that they would have been washed or flaked off into the water, so that she drank the words of the curse – it became a part of her being.

⁷ tn Heb “and upright men will judge them (with) the judgment of adulteresses and the judgment of those who shed blood.”

⁸ tn Heb “assembly.”

⁹ tn Heb “give them to.”

¹⁰ tn The Hebrew text adds “with fire.”

¹¹ tn Grk “to him”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹² sn An allusion to Lev 20:10 and Deut 22:22-24.

¹³ sn The accusers themselves subtly misrepresented the law. The Mosaic law stated that in the case of adultery, both the man and woman must be put to death (Lev 20:10, Deut 22:22), but they mentioned only such women.