🔢WEB · Numbers 5:20
What does Numbers 5:20 mean?
"But if you have gone astray, being under your husband, and if you are defiled, and some man has lain with you besides your husband:”"
— Numbers 5:20 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
and the priest shall take holy water in an earthen vessel; and of the dust that is on the floor of the tabernacle the priest shall take, and put it into the water.
The priest shall set the woman before Yahweh, and let the hair of the woman’s head go loose, and put the meal offering of memorial in her hands, which is the meal offering of jealousy. The priest shall have in his hand the water of bitterness that brings a curse.
The priest shall cause her to swear, and shall tell the woman, “If no man has lain with you, and if you haven’t gone aside to uncleanness, being under your husband, be free from this water of bitterness that brings a curse.
But if you have gone astray, being under your husband, and if you are defiled, and some man has lain with you besides your husband:”
then the priest shall cause the woman to swear with the oath of cursing, and the priest shall tell the woman, “Yahweh make you a curse and an oath among your people, when Yahweh allows your thigh to fall away, and your body to swell;
and this water that brings a curse will go into your bowels, and make your body swell, and your thigh fall away.” The woman shall say, “Amen, Amen.”
“‘The priest shall write these curses in a book, and he shall blot them out into the water of bitterness.
Explanation
This verse is one clause within a larger legal ritual found in Numbers 5:11-31, sometimes called the "test of the bitter water" or the sotah ritual. In plain language, verse 20 describes the specific accusation being addressed: a wife who, while married and under her husband's authority, has gone astray by allowing another man to have sexual relations with her, thereby defiling herself and breaking the marriage covenant. The verse is essentially the priest stating aloud, as part of an oath, the condition under which a curse would take effect—namely, if the woman is in fact guilty of the adultery she is suspected of.
The context is ancient Israel's wilderness legal code, given through Moses to the priests as instructions for how to handle a specific domestic crisis: a husband suspects his wife of infidelity but has no witnesses or proof. Rather than leaving the matter unresolved, which could fester into ongoing suspicion and marital breakdown, the law provided a formal, priestly-supervised procedure. The woman is brought before the priest, an oath is administered, and she drinks water mixed with dust from the tabernacle floor and ink washed from a written curse. If she is guilty, the ritual describes physical consequences following as a divine judgment; if
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