Soṭah
| Halakhic texts relating to this article | |
|---|---|
| Torah: | Numbers 5:11-31 |
| Mishnah: | Sotah |
| Babylonian Talmud: | Sotah |
| Jerusalem Talmud: | Sotah |
| Mishneh Torah: | Sefer Nashim, Sotah |
A Sotah (Hebrew: שוטה / סוטה) is a woman suspected of adultery who undergoes the ordeal of bitter water or ordeal of jealousy as described and prescribed in the Priestly Code, in the Book of Numbers, the fourth book of the Hebrew Bible. The term "Sotah" itself is not found in the Hebrew Bible but is Mishnaic Hebrew based on the verse "if she has strayed" (verb: שטה satah) in Numbers 5:12. The process was a trial by ordeal administered to the wife whose husband suspected her of adultery but who had no witnesses to make a formal case (Numbers 5:11-31). The ordeal is further explained in the Talmud, in the eponymous seventh tractate of Nashim.
The account of the ordeal of bitter water given in the Book of Numbers is as follows:
19 And the priest shall cause her to swear, and shall say unto the woman: 'If no man have lain with thee, and if thou hast not gone aside to uncleanness, being under thy husband, be thou free from this water of bitterness that causeth the curse;
20 but if thou hast gone aside, being under thy husband, and if thou be defiled, and some man have lain with thee besides thy husband--
21 then the priest shall cause the woman to swear with the oath of cursing, and the priest shall say unto the woman--the LORD make thee a curse and an oath among thy people, when the LORD doth make thy thigh to fall away, and thy belly to swell;
22 and this water that causeth the curse shall go into thy bowels, and make thy belly to swell, and thy thigh to fall away'; and the woman shall say: 'Amen, Amen.'
23 And the priest shall write these curses in a scroll, and he shall blot them out into the water of bitterness. 24 And he shall make the woman drink the water of bitterness that causeth the curse; and the water that causeth the curse shall enter into her and become bitter.
The ritual is fairly unusual in the Hebrew Bible, and although some scholars think that it might be mentioned in Psalm 109:18, there is no other Biblical evidence for the ritual ever having been carried out, nor is its existence acknowledged elsewhere in the Bible.
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