The Suspected Adulteress

 Based on a women's group teaching by Chana Weisberg:

    The story of the Sotah (suspected adulteress) is not just for a specific time and place in the days of old - it has meaning for us in our lives today.

    This story is a metaphor for each and every one of us - for when we mess up in life.

    The Sages of Israel teach that where a Ba'al T'shuva stands, the Tsaddiq cannot stand. Why is that?

    Yeshua said that one who is forgiven much, loves much. I think that about covers it.

    Back to the Sotah. She does not have to endure this degrading procedure. If she decides she's had enough of the marriage, she can just walk away. She or her husband can just walk away. She doesn't need to be exonerated.

    It's only when she says No, I want to continue my relationship with my husband - and he says the same - only then does this whole situation happen.

Numbers 5:11-31

Verse 12: Regarding anyone whose wife has gone astray and broken faith with him,

The Talmud

says that a person doesn't sin unless a spirit of folly has entered him/her. The word the Torah uses for folly is תִשְׂטֶ֣ה, which also means insanity.

The Tanya (paraphrased)

says we have two souls, one that clothes itself in the blood (nefesh) and the other that is a part of God and strives to attach itself to God above. The nefesh houses the animal soul, where our physical desires are rooted. The body is called a small city. As two kings wage war over a city, each wishing to capture it and rule over it; that is to say, to govern it and rule over it according to his will, so that they obey him in all that he decrees for them, so do the two souls - the animal soul and the Godly soul - wage war against each other over the body and all its organs and limbs. The desire of the Godly soul is that it alone should reign over the person and that all its organs and limbs should surrender themselves completely to it and become a vehicle for it.

Here's the link to the complete - and very interesting - piece of Tanya:

https://www.chabad.org/torah-texts/7362453/Chabadorg-Tanya/Chapter-9/Chapter-9

    So every moment of every day that we're alive is this fighting that's going on within us.

    Back to the Scripture: She was secluded with the suspected adulterer.

The Lubavitcher Rebbi

says the suspected adulteress is a metaphor for anyone who has strayed from God. God said not to have any other gods before Him and warned us not to be unfaithful to Him. But how can one become secluded from God, whose glory fills the entire Earth? By being arrogant. Arrogance conceals a person from God. God says the arrogant person and I cannot dwell in the same place. The solution is to bring an offering of barley flour, which is referred to as animal fodder, meaning, a person needs to humble himself. 

The Rebbi is explaining here that it's arrogance that is the seat of all difficulty, folly, negativity and sin. Why? Because when you're arrogant you can't see another point of view, you can't bend. You see only what you want and what you want is of supreme importance and you don't care about anything else.

    So, then what happens to this woman?

Verse 23: The priest shall put these curses down in writing and rub it off into the water of bitterness.

The Talmud, Chullin:

Great is Peace, for to make peace between husband and wife, the Torah instructs that the Name of God, written in holiness, should be blotted out in water. The text of the oath that was in the bitter waters administered to the Sotah included the Divine Name.

    So the Kohen tries to dissuade her from drinking these bitter waters, he tries to dissuade her from actually having the Name of God erased. He tries to tell her to admit her sin, to not take this test, but if she persists, saying she's innocent, even though her behaviour must have been less than exemplary to get her to this point, she then drinks the bitter water, which contains God's name. God allows His Name to be erased because peace between husband and wife and between any human being is so very important to God that He allows His Own Name to be erased.

    What happens next?

Verse 27: Once he has made her drink the water—if she has defiled herself by breaking faith with her husband, the spell-inducing water shall enter into her to bring on bitterness, so that her belly shall distend and her thigh shall sag; and the woman shall become a curse among her people.

The Talmud, Sotah:

Just as the waters test her, they also test him, ie, if she's guilty, the same happens to the adulterer.

And if she is clean, she shall be exempted and she shall bear seed.

The Jerusalem Talmud, Sotah:

God compensates her for her humiliation. If she were barren, she would now conceive. If she gave birth painfully, she will now give birth with ease. If she gave birth to unattractive children, she will now give birth to beautiful children.

In other words, she gets rewarded. She gets a blessing. Why?

She's definitely done something immodest, because otherwise she wouldn't be brought to the Kohen. Even though she may not actually have done the deed, to get to this point, her behaviour bore the marks of immorality enough for her husband to suspect her of adultery. So why is she being rewarded?

She realises that what she's done is wrong, even though nothing actually happened, and she wants everyone to know that she's really sorry - sorry enough to be prepared to go through this humiliating procedure in front of everyone at the Temple and by her actions say she won't repeat her mistake.

How the Rebbi relates the story to each and every one of us:

She returns to her full marital status. Similarly, when we sin against God, we should not think we are lost and cannot return.

Isn't that how we often feel? When we've done something wrong, we say: "Oh, forget it. It's over. There's just no path of return. I've gone too far."

We shouldn't say, as the Jewish people erroneously did after the destruction of the first Temple, "God has forsaken me, God has forgotten me."

We must remember that even when we sin, the Divine Soul within us has remains faithful to God.

    Just like she did not completely destroy her marriage by acting immodestly, so too we, when we sin, do not - cannot! - completely sever ourselves from Our Heavenly Father.

Our temporary indiscretion was only an act of our animal soul and through repentance, which restores the Divine Soul's control, our relationship with God can be reinstated.

    Without Yeshua, we wouldn't even be able to do repentance. He has come to make a way for us into the House of Israel so that we can work out our salvation with fear and trembling. He did say He is the Door.

Furthermore, our relationship with God will even improve. We will now be able to bear children. If, before the sin, our spiritual efforts didn't seem to bear permanent fruit, ie, we were unable to sustain our love and awe of God, our renewed and deepened commitment to God will enable us to sustain Divine consciousness and feel God's presence with a greater depth and permanence. Nonetheless, the priest does not inform the woman of the potential benefit before she drinks.

    We might think: Why doesn't he tell her: Drink this drink, and everything will be so much better if you really are innocent?

This mirrors the process of repentance. When a person repents, he is not only spiritually cleansed from his prior sin, but reaches an even higher spiritual status than before his sinful act.

However, a person cannot say, I will sin and then I will repent, for then he will not be granted the opportunity to do so, to do teshuva.

    When a person has sinned, he shouldn't say, "I'm totally lost, there's no path of return!" But to the contrary, the path of return will bear children; it will bear even greater rewards for you, because now you've realised how important your relationship with God is to you. It was the sin that made you realise you needed to re-evaluate what you were doing in your life and how you valued your relationship with God and not take it for granted any more. It was the sin that allowed you to reach a level that, before the sin, you could never reach. Just like the Ba'al T'shuva.

Summary:

The story of the suspected wife can be seen as a lesson in our sojourns in life. It is a cosmic metaphor of the marriage between God and wayward Israel, who is tested and eventually exonerated through the bitter waters of exile. The isshah sotah, like each of us struggling with the vicissitudes in our lives, or like Israel struggling with the bitter exile, has never really entirely strayed. We are still married to our ideals and spiritual vision. We simply need to be reunited with our true inner selves.

The path of exoneration and return takes effort and strength of character and will leads to a more mature relationship with ourselves and our world. We do not just return to what we were, we grow through the process. Only after straying and then rebounding do we become a greater, more courageous and enriched human being, driven by a yearning for a stronger, more meaningful bond with God.

    Isn't it such a breathtaking moment to realise that the Torah speaks to us today and tells us that God will never let us go? I have never seen the story of the Sotah through this lens. I am so encouraged to have the metaphor explained to me.

Layla Tov!