Study Sotah folio 20A with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
The Talmud asks: The statement of R' Akiva is difficult, as it is contradicted by another statement of R' Akiva: There, in the first baraita, he said that erasure prevents the authorities from compelling the woman to drink the water if she retracted her decision to drink, and here he says that the
The Talmud responds: There is a dispute between two tanna’im, and they disagree with regard to the opinion of R' Akiva. They disagree with regard to what point in time, according to R' Akiva, is the final moment at which a woman can refuse to drink the bitter water without being forced to do so.
A dilemma was raised before the rabbis: If she initially said: I will not drink, while in a state of good health, and then she retracted her statement and said: I will drink, what is the halakha? Does one say that when she said: I will not drink, it is as if she confessed and said: I am defiled, an
Shmuel’s father says: It is necessary for one to put a bitter substance into the water that the sota drinks. What is the reason for this? It is as the verse states: “And he shall blot them out into the water of bitterness” (Numbers 5:23), indicating that they are already bitter before the scroll i
Mishnah: If before the scroll was erased she said: I will not drink, the scroll that was written for her is sequestered, and her meal-offering is burned and scattered over the place of the ashes, and her scroll is not fit to give to another sota to drink. If the scroll was erased and afterward she