Sotah 029

2:
The first scenario is that the Divine Names written on the parchment scroll have not yet been erased by immersion in the water. (From a careful reading of the Gemara on our mishnah [Sotah 20b] it appears that it is possible that a certain ingredient was omitted from the special ink that was used to write this parchment scroll in order to facilitate the process of erasure.) The woman suddenly says that she will not drink the potion. This does not necessarily imply an admission of guilt, but is merely an indication that she declines to drink the potion. It is not clear to me whether the phrase in our mishnah 'the scroll has not been erased' means that it has not yet been introduced into the water or that it has been so introduced but that the writing has not yet begun to be erased. Under such circumstances the ceremony is over. We recall that right from the start it had been the desire of the sages to obviate this ceremony, and at the very last moment the woman has acceded to this. The ceremony is aborted and the husband is now free to divorce his wife. The cereal-offering is scattered on the rubbish dump – the heap of sacrificial remains which was situated at the side of the altar ramp, and which, as we learned in Tamid 2:2, was cleared daily by the priests. The scroll on which the Divine Names had been written could not be destroyed or discarded. It was hidden away. According to the Tosefta [Sotah 2:2] it was hidden away somehow beneath the hinge of the massive doors that were the entrance to the Sanctuary [Heikhal]. This scroll could not be later retrieved for use with another woman since each scroll had to be written for that specific woman. The Tosefta also adds that the water was thrown away.

3:
The second scenario is that the writing on the scroll has been erased by the water but before she begins to drink the woman admits her adultery. Under such circumstances the ceremony is aborted, as before. We have already noted that this admission will not serve to incriminate the woman since there were no witnesses to the admitted sin: the husband is free to divorce his wife.

4:
The third scenario is where the writing has been erased but the woman refuses to drink (presumably out of fear). Our mishnah teaches that it is now too late for the woman to decline and she must be forced to drink the potion. Somehow or other the water was forced down her throat: our mishnah does not elaborate. In the Tosefta [Sotah 2:3] Rabbi Yehudah ben-Ilai is quoted as saying that her mouth was opened with a metal wrench.

5:
I have included in this mishnah the first part of the following mishnah. In the Talmud these two mishnayot are treated as one, and for our purposes it seems more convenient didactically to divide these two mishnayot up in this manner. Our mishnah gives a graphic description of the effects of this potion. It is not clear whether these effects are deemed to afflict all women who drink or just those who are guilty; however it would appear that the latter is the case. I do not know whether these effects can be attributed to any physical etiology or not: I do not know whether water containing some grains of dirt and some ink residue would have the effect of causing the woman's face to take on a yellow hue, her veins and her body to swell, and her eyes to start to bulge. At any rate at the first signs of such symptoms the hapless woman is physically removed from the Priestly Court so that its sanctity not be defiled. (Many moderns would say that its sanctity had already been defiled by the ceremony itself, but is this not to transfer to an earlier age the mores and values system of a later age?)