Sotah 030

Hareini lomed/lomedet Mishnah le'ilu'i nishmato shel Yitzĥak ben Rosa u-Neĥemya Rabin
הריני לומד/ת משניות לעילוי נשמתו של יצחק בן רוזה ונחמיה רבין
I am studying Mishnah in memory of Yitzĥak Rabin, son of Rosa and Neĥemya

How could it affect all women who drink? What would the justice of that be or even the efficacy of the ordeal? If everyone who drinks it has symptoms, the sotah waters tell us nothing. The unjustly accused woman has no choice but to drink the waters or else confess to a crime she did not commit.

I had already hinted at the same thing myself, because I wrote:

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.

When I wrote that I had in mind the mishnah to which we now turn our attention.

2:
It must have been clear to the sages that the test of the 'bitter cursing waters' was by no means foolproof. I have given my own view several times already that the whole ceremony was designed for its psychological effect: a husband suspects that his wife has been unfaithful to him but has no proof; ideally an innocent woman will have no qualms at drinking the potion and 'proving' her innocence, while the woman with a guilty conscience will prefer to admit her infidelity rather than permit the Divine Name which has been dissolved into the water to penetrate her body. However, it is quite possible that women who really were guilty brazenly submitted to the ceremony and came through unscathed! This is the subject of our present mishnah, which, for us today, is one of the most important in all the six orders of the Mishnah for reasons that are not directly associated with the Sotah ceremony.

To be continued.

I couldn't find any source that indicates that the dirt under the marble slab inside the Heichal was used for anything other than Sotah. However, there are two other instances I discovered where marble slabs were used as 'trap doors'. One was to cover the entrance to the underground hollow where the blood from the yesod was collected, and was removed when the chamber needed cleaning; the other was in the Beit Hamoked (the headquarters of the Temple Watch) and was used to hide the keys to the Mikdash, which were strung on a long chain and replaced every evening. The layout and functioning of the Beit Hamikdash is very interesting and often neglected by Masorti/Conservative Jews. Two great sources are "Colorful Ceremonies in the Beit Hamikdash" (Based on Rambam), and "A Guide to the Beit Hamikdash" (Based on Tiferet Israel).

I comment:

I do not think that the items mentioned were 'design elements' if by that we mean that they were specifically 'built in' to the Bet Mikdash complex for their specific purposes. The exception is, of course, what Ben calls the 'trap door' which gave access to the conduit which ran from underneath the main altar to the Kidron stream. Every now and then the 'trap door' was opened in order to clean the conduit to ensure a free flow. The other items are just utilizing artifacts that are already there anyway (for other purposes).

Ben says that the layout and functioning of the Bet Mikdash is neglected by Masorti/Conservative Jews. While this may be generally correct it is not true of RMSG! Ben must have joiuned us recently; otherwise he would have known that not so very long ago we completed a study of Tractate Tamid, and I am working hard to prepare the archive which hopefully will be added to our web site as soon as possible.