“Speak to the children of Israel, and tell them: ‘If any man’s wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him, and a man lies with her carnally, and it is hidden from the eyes of her husband and this is kept concealed, and she is defiled, there is no witness against her, and she isn’t taken in the act; and the spirit of jealousy comes on him, and he is jealous of his wife and she is defiled; or if the spirit of jealousy comes on him, and he is jealous of his wife and she isn’t defiled; then the man shall bring his wife to the priest, and shall bring her offering for her: one tenth of an ephah of barley meal. He shall pour no oil on it, nor put frankincense on it, for it is a meal offering of jealousy, a meal offering of memorial, bringing iniquity to memory. The priest shall bring her near, and set her before Yahweh. The priest shall take holy water in an earthen vessel; and the priest shall take some of the dust that is on the floor of the tabernacle 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 take an oath 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’s authority, be free from this water of bitterness that brings a curse. But if you have gone astray, being under your husband’s authority, 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, “May 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 wipe them into the water of bitterness.
To adjudicate cases involving a woman suspected of infidelity (sotah) through the prescribed ritual
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְהֶעֱמִיד הַכֹּהֵן אֶת־הָאִשָּׁה לִפְנֵי יְהוָה וּפָרַע אֶת־רֹאשׁ הָאִשָּׁה וְנָתַן עַל־כַּפֶּיהָ אֵת מִנְחַת הַזִּכָּרוֹן
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו בדין סוטה. והוא אמרו יתברך איש כי תשטה אשתו. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו כלם איך ישקה אותה ואיך יקריב קרבנה וזולת זה מתנאיה במסכת סוטה. (נשא את ראש, נשים הלכות סוטה פ"ג):
That is that He commanded us about the law of the sotah (suspected adulteress). And that is His, may He be blessed, saying, "if a man’s wife has gone astray" (Numbers 5:12). And the regulations of this commandment - how she is made to drink, how she offers her sacrifice and her [other] stipulations besides this - have all already been explained in Tractate Sotah. (See Parashat Nasso; Mishneh Torah, Woman Suspected of Infidelity 3)
Hebrew: Sefer HaMitzvot, Warsaw 1883 (public domain). English: Sefaria Edition, trans. Rabbi Francis Nataf, 2021 (CC0). Via Sefaria; translator’s footnotes omitted.
Literary form: a ritual instruction
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- Requires a standing Temple
Classical halakhic consequences
The consequences the classical halakhah attaches to this commandment, grouped by who imposes them. Where a category has none recorded, that absence is itself meaningful.
Imposed by a court
No court-imposed penalty is recorded.
At the hands of Heaven
No divinely-imposed consequence is recorded.
Ritual remedy
No ritual remedy is recorded.
How the streams of Judaism treat this commandment
The streams of Judaism read the same commandment differently — an ongoing plurality, not a ranking. Each position below is reported as the catalog records it; none is presented as the correct one.
- Orthodox Binding, with modification
- Conservative Not binding
- Reform Rejected
- Reconstructionist Rejected
- Karaite Position not stated
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this one is queued.
How later traditions received this commandment
How later traditions read or reworked this commandment, each attributed to its own voice. The catalog’s own classification of each reception is shown as it records it, never adopted as GEBible’s.
Rabbinic aggadah
- Numbers Rabbah 9 expanded it homiletically
- b. Sotah 7a-9a The catalog describes this reception as: halakhic procedural elaboration (listed for completeness)
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 3.52-62 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 3.270-273 rationalized it
The New Testament
- John 7:53-8:11 reinterpreted it The pericope adulterae (a later interpolation, absent from the earliest manuscripts) concerns a woman accused of adultery; scholars frequently read it against the broader adultery-law backdrop, but the connection to the sotah ordeal specifically is interpretive inference, and the narrative abandons ordeal logic entirely.
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 24:6-9 carried a parallel, with divergence
Beside the older legal codes of its world
The commandment set beside the ancient Near-Eastern legal collections scholars compare it to — a descriptive comparison, not a claim of dependence.
- code of hammurabi river ordeal for a wife accused of adultery without proof Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §132 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- code of hammurabi river ordeal to resolve an unprovable accusation of sorcery (structural ordeal-logic analogy only, not a topical adultery parallel) Relationship to the parallel: shared theme §2 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- code of hammurabi exculpatory oath by an accused wife when no witness exists Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §131 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- middle assyrian laws river ordeal in cases of unproven accusation against a wife Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence A §17 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
Where this commandment meets modern human-rights frameworks
One modern normative lens, attributed to it — not GEBible’s assessment. Each row names the framework it measures against and the catalog’s own classification of the relation.
This framework catalogues tensions; it records agreement in only one of its entries. The near-total tension rate is the shape of the instrument, not a finding.
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Articles 15–16 (equality before the law; equal rights in marriage and family life)
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The *sotah* ordeal is structurally gender-asymmetric: only a wife suspected by her husband is subjected to the trial; no equivalent procedure exists for a wife who suspects her husband. CEDAW Articles 15–16 require equal treatment of men and women in legal proceedings and family matters, which the one-directional ordeal violates at the level of procedure.
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UDHR Article 10 (fair and public hearing by an independent tribunal); ICCPR Article 14
This framework classifies the relation as an incompatible method.
Trial by ritual ordeal — determining guilt or innocence through the physiological effects of ingesting a priestly potion — is incompatible with modern due-process standards requiring evidence-based adjudication, the presumption of innocence, and the right to a hearing before an impartial tribunal applying identifiable legal criteria.
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Article 5 (no cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment)
This framework classifies the relation as a substantive tension.
The ritual includes public loosening of the woman's hair — a shaming gesture — and compelled ingestion of a potentially harmful potion as the mechanism of divine judgment. Even absent the intended physical consequences of guilt, the degrading public character of the ordeal generates tension with Article 5's prohibition of degrading treatment.
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rabbinic tradition; Mishnah Sotah 9:9; requires_temple = true
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai abolished the *sotah* ordeal after the Temple's destruction (Mishnah Sotah 9:9), citing Hosea 4:14; the commandment additionally requires Temple infrastructure (*requires_temple = true*) making it doubly inoperative. The de jure norm remains in Talmudic and Maimonidean codification.
The enumeration counts this as a structural duplicate of commandment #483 — Structural duplicate of #483 sharing collision_key shm:Positive 223. Independent reading of both entries confirms a true duplicate of Rambam Positive 223 (= the affirmative sotah-administration commandment, Chinuch 365, Hilkhot Sotah). Both #389 and #483 cover Num 5:11-31, both are positive priestly-duty mitzvot, both categorize as misogyny/superstition, both cite th See task #95..