The Trial of Jealousy (adapted). Cassell's Illustrated Family Bible, 1880
Sotah: A Purification Ritual for an Adulteress Revised into an Ordeal
In the original Priestly account of the sotah ritual, an adulterous woman herself brings a grain offering, and the priest publicly humiliates and curses her as part of a purification process for her sin. Later, the Holiness School editors reworked the narrative: the focus shifts to a jealous husband who suspects his wife of infidelity and brings her before the priests to undergo the ordeal of bitter waters—a divine test that determines her guilt or innocence.
Published: June 13, 2025
|
Last Updated: September 7, 2026
Translation is based on NJPS, but with many adjustments.
This stands for Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, meaning “Journal for Old Testament Studies.”
See Bernhard Stade, “Die Eiferopferthora” [The Torah of Jealousy], ZAW 15 (1895) 166–178.
See Jacob Milgrom, “The Case of the Suspected Adulteress, Numbers 5:11–31: Redaction and Meaning,” in The Creation of Sacred Literature, ed. Richard Elliott Friedman (Univ. of California Press, 1981), 69–75.
Israel Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness School, trans. Jackie Feldman and Peretz Rodman (Eisenbrauns, 2007; repr. of Press Fortress, 1995), 87–88; trans. of, מקדש הדממה: עיון ברובדי היצירה הכוהנית שבתורה (Magnes Press, 1992). See also Idan Dershowitz, “The Guilt of the Slanderer and the Sotah: From Certainty to Uncertainty,” TheTorah (2015), who also argues that the verse which declares how the bitter waters are meant to be a test, since we don’t know if she has cheated, is a redaction.
That said, many scholars have turned away from a redaction model and read the text as a single literary unit crafted by one author. See Michael Fishbane, “Accusations of Adultery: A Study of Law and Scribal Practice in Numbers 5:11–31,” HUCA 45 (1974): 25–45; Herbert C. Brichto, “The Case Law of the sōṭā and a Reconsideration of Biblical Law,” HUCA 46 (1975): 55–70; Tikva Frymer-Kensy, “The Strange Case of the Suspected Sotah (Numbers V 11–31),” Vetus Testamentum 34 (1984): 11–26.
Rabbinic tradition says she brings it for the sin of being alone with another man, interpreting the verse against its simple meaning:
ירושלמי סוטה א:ב אָמַר רִבִּי יוֹסֵי: "...דִכְתִיב: 'וְנִסְתְּרָה וְהִיא נִטְמָאָה' – כֵּיוָן שֶׁנִּסְתְרָה הַתּוֹרָה קְרָאָהּ טְמֵאָה."
j. Sotah 1:2 Rabbi Yossi said: “…for it is written (Num 5:11): ‘and she was a lone and was defiled’ — since she was alone, the Torah calls her defiled.”
The verse, however, more likely means that she is hiding the fact that she had an affair, not that she was caught alone with a man. R. Hezekiah ben Manoach (13th century) suggested another approach, to explain the depiction of the offering as having to do with sin:
חזקוני במדבר ה:טו "מזכרת עון" – אחד משתיהם או חטא האשה או חטא בעלה החושדה.
Hizkuni Num 5:15 “Which recalls wrongdoing”—of one of the two. Either the woman sinned or her husband who suspected her did.
This too goes against the grain of the simple meaning of the passage, which deals only with her sin.
For more on this, see Zev Farber, “The Resumptive Repetition (Wiederaufnahme),” TheTorah (2013).
In this case, both Milgrom and Knohl note the Wiederaufname and see the insertion as redactional.
The new phrase is awkwardly placed, since generally, accusatives follow the verb directly. But removing it leaves the phrase without any direct object, which is also problematic. It is possible that something was lost in the redaction here
It was apparently necessary to allow the offering to “interrupt” the redactor’s new ritual, since it should take place before the woman’s final punishment or her acquittal.
While removing the noun from the second position in the construct state phrase, and leaving the word אשר to take its place may seem problematic, we find the same grammatical structure in another Priestly text in Leviticus:
ויקרא יד:לב זֹאת תּוֹרַת אֲשֶׁר בּוֹ נֶגַע צָרָעַת אֲשֶׁר לֹא תַשִּׂיג יָדוֹ בְּטָהֳרָתוֹ.
Lev 14:32 Such is the ritual for him who has a tzaraʿat affliction and whose means for his cleansing are limited.
See discussion in Eve Levavi Feinstein, “Sex During Menstruation: From Impurity to Prohibition,” TheTorah (2016).
As noted above, this phrase likely rewrote or replaced something older.
