Later, God gives Israel two laws that effectively protect women in the society of Israel. The first is the test for the unfaithful wife, where the accusations are based merely on jealousy and suspicion. The second is the proclamation of clarifying women's inheritance of their fathers' property if there is no son.
The first, the unfaithful wife test, is designed so that only the guilty women will bear any punishment, rather than unfairly punishing innocent women. If a husband believed his wife to be unfaithful, he may bring her to the priest, where a ritual is performed, and the woman must drink "bitter water" to test her purity (Num. 4:24). This water is complete with a curse that is activated by the woman's oath that agrees to the curse. If she wasn't pure, the water will cause her to become infertile and become cursed. This test is similar to many tests that were "lie detectors" in the ancient world, but the difference is that God's law was protecting the innocent women from deceptive or paranoid husbands, and mostly from unfair punishment.
A man died in Israel without any son's in Moses' time, and the daughters of the man, five in total. They came before Moses and asked if they might inherit their father's estate, seeing as there were no male descendants (Num. 27: 3-4). Moses, seeing the complexity of the situation, took the problem to God, who said that the daughters of a sonless man might divide the property of the father amongst them (Num. 27:8). Later in the book of Numbers, the issue is returned to and clarified more by God saying that every daughter that inherits her father's land must marry within her father's tribe to keep the land in the tribe (Num. 36:6). In enacting this law and protocol, God raised the social status of women in the society, much as he protected them with the unfaithful wife test.
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