According to Tikva Frymer-Kensky, the ritual is not actually an "ordeal" which provides a verdict on the woman's guilt for use by human judges for the issuance of the penalty for adultery on the woman (which would be execution by stoning), but rather takes the form of a "purgatory oath, in which the individual swearing the oath puts himself under divine jurisdiction, expecting to be punished by God if the oath-taker is guilty".
The account of the ordeal of bitter water is given in the Book of Numbers: Then Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, "Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, 'If any man's wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him, and a man lies sexually with her, and it is hidden from the eyes of her husband, and she is undetected; but she has defiled herself, and there is no witness against her, and she has not been caught in the act, if a spirit of jealousy comes over him and he is jealous of his wife and she has defiled herself, or if a spirit of jealousy comes over him and he is jealous of his wife but she has not defiled herself, the man shall then bring his wife to the priest and shall bring as an offering for her one-tenth of an ephah of barley meal; he shall not pour oil on it nor put frankincense on it, for it is a grain offering of jealousy, a grain offering of remembrance, a reminder of iniquity.
[8] The husband was required to make a sacrifice to Yahweh as part of the ritual, probably due to a general principle that no one should seek answers from God without giving something in return.
(Num 5:26) In cases of guilt, the text does not specify the amount of time needed for the potion to take effect; 19th century scholars[who?]
[16] Other scholars maintain that since the word "thigh" is often used in the Bible as a euphemism for various reproductive organs, in this case it may mean the uterus, the placenta, or an embryo, with the implicit threat of death resulting from possible fatal childbirth complications.
[13][17][18] Several commentaries on the Bible maintain that the ordeal is to be applied in the case of a woman who has become pregnant, allegedly by her extramarital lover.
[13][19] In this interpretation, the bitter potion could be an abortifacient, inducing a purposeful abortion or miscarriage if the woman is pregnant with a child which her husband alleges is another man's.
[26] However, Tikva Frymer-Kensky rejected this interpretation on the grounds that the Biblical text does not limit the ordeal to pregnant women, and that the phrase venizreah zera ("she shall be sown with seed", the reward given to an innocent woman after the trial) refers to conception rather than delivery.
[30] The Mishnah mentions that while a guilty woman would normally die immediately from the trial, her death could also be delayed by one, two or three years, if she possessed offsetting merits.
[31] Nachmanides points out that of all the 613 commandments, it is only the sotah law that requires God's specific co-operation to make it work.
[40] Biblical critics from the 19th and early 20th centuries argued, based on certain textual features in the passage, that it was formed by the combination of two earlier texts.
[7] Similarly, noting that there are two descriptions of the location for the ritual (in the presence of a priest (5:15) and before Yahweh (5:30)) and two occasions on which the punishment for the woman is mentioned (5:21 and 5:27), the division into two earlier documents, first suggested by Bernhard Stade[41] is typically as follows: Other early biblical scholars thought that the ordeal is itself a fusion of two earlier rituals (pre-dating the original priestly text), one using water, and the other dust.
[7] In other historic Semitic cultures there are many instances in which holy water was regarded as taboo, and therefore that contact with it, or its consumption, was dangerous.
[44] Pre-Islamic Arabic culture similarly had an adultery ordeal, although in scientific terms, compared to the Israelite ritual it relied more on nausea, than on directly poisoning the woman.
[45] Ordeals involving the risk of harm, including potential injury resulting from the drinking of certain potions, were common in antiquity;[7] in parts of Europe, their judicial use even lasted until the late Middle Ages.
The naturalist Alfred Grandidier presented similar practices among the Malagasy to argue for ancient Israelite migrations to Madagascar.
[46] According to Helena Zlotnick, even though the ordeal of bitter water is no longer practiced, it remains a reference point in the search for replacements for the test of adultery.