Sotah 020

3:
According to the Torah [Numbers 5:23-24] the use to which the 'holy water' drawn from the laver was put was to dissolve the Divine Name, which would then be drunk by the woman. In mishnah 3 we shall see that there is a disagreement among the sages as to what exactly was to be written as the writing which was to be dissolved in the water. Rabbi Yehudah [bar Ilai] will be seen to require less text to be written than those who are in disagreement with him. Thus our present mishnah explains that this is why he requires to be used only half the amount of water that is required by the rest of the sages: less writing requires less dissolvent.

3:
Our mishnah now goes on to describe the next part of the preparations for the ceremony. The Torah [Numbers 5:17] requires the officiating priest to place into the water some dirt 'from the ground of the sanctuary'. In the past we have had occasion to note that elements of ritual which had a certain jarring aspect to them were ritualized. This is also the case with this aspect of the Sotah ceremony. The priest was required to lift a certain tile from the floor of the sanctuary. This tile, approximately 50 centimetres square, was marked by having a ring set into it which facilitated its removal.

4:
The Gemara [Sotah 15b] notes that if there was not suitable dirt underneath this flagstone some dirt was to have been previously introduced there so that the priest would have dirt to scoop up. The Talmud of Eretz-Israel [Sotah 10b] tries to explain this strange combination of dirt and water:

This is reminiscent of the teaching of the mishnah in Avot 3:1, where we are reminded that the origin of each human being is 'a putrid drop' (of semen) and our destination is 'a place of dirt and worms' (the grave), and that ultimately we shall be required to 'give account and reckoning' before the divine throne. Thus the mixture of water and dirt is romanticized into a reminder to the woman that God knows whether she is speaking the truth or not, for it is before God that she must give her ultimate self-justification.

5:
Our mishnah notes that the officiating priest was required to put into the water in the bowl enough dirt to be visible and distinguishable in the water. This is learned from the fact that the Hebrew text of the Torah [Numbers 5:17] is rather strangely worded, in so far as one would have expected the simple adverb 'in' to be used in the phrase 'and he shall put [the dirt] in the water', whereas the Hebrew text uses a different adverb – yielding the same meaning.

When we studied the first mishnah of the present chapter we saw that the cereal offering that accompanied the Sotah was brought in what I translated as a wicker basket. I pointed out in my explanation that –