Tanach (JPS): Numbers: Numbers Chapter 5

This is a passage from the Hebrew Bible (Tanach), specifically from the Book of Numbers (Bamidbar), presented in the 1917 Jewish Publication Society translation — part of the Torah, the foundational legal and narrative text of Judaism. The passage contains three distinct divine commandments delivered to Moses: the exclusion of ritually impure individuals (lepers, those with bodily discharges, those defiled by corpses) from the Israelite camp; laws governing confession and financial restitution for sins committed against others; and the detailed "sotah" ritual, a trial-by-ordeal for a wife suspected of adultery. The sotah procedure is the most extensively described element, outlining a ceremony in which a priest administers "bitter water" mixed with dust and ink from a written curse to a suspected adulteress, with the belief that the water will cause physical harm if she is guilty but leave her unharmed if innocent. Distinctively, the text frames guilt as supernaturally self-revealing, placing divine judgment inside the woman's body itself as the mechanism of proof. The passage is also notable for its asymmetry: the ritual applies only to wives suspected by husbands, with no parallel procedure for men, and the husband is explicitly absolved of wrongdoing regardless of outcome while the woman alone bears consequences. Readers interested in ancient Israelite legal practice, gender in religious law, or the history of ritual and purity codes will find this passage particularly rich.

Tanach (JPS): Numbers: Numbers Chapter 5

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