Numbers 5:19

Summary

The priest places the woman under oath and pronounces a conditional declaration: if no man has lain with her and she has not turned aside to impurity while under her husband's authority, she is to be free from the effects of the "bitter waters that bring a curse." The verse is structured as two parallel conditional clauses followed by an imperative release.

Key words

• hishBia ("he will make swear", H7650) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect: the priest causes the woman to swear, continuing the narrative sequence of ritual actions.
• shaKhav ("he has lain with", H7901I) — qal perfect, denoting a completed action prior to the oath, used with the negation lo' ("not", H3808) to form the first conditional protasis.
• saTit ("you have turned aside", H7847) — qal perfect, second person feminine, the woman as grammatical subject of the second condition, paired with tum'ah ("uncleanness", H2932) as its object/complement.
• hinnaKi ("be free", H5352) — niphal imperative, feminine singular: a passive/reflexive command form addressed directly to the woman, marking the apodosis of the double condition.
• me'ararim ("bring a curse", H0779) — piel participle, masculine plural, functioning attributively on hammarim ("bitter [things]", H4751) to describe the waters as agents that curse.

What the text says

The verse opens with two sequential perfects, hishBia ("he will make swear", H7650) and 'amar ("he will say", H0559), both carrying narrative ve prefixes that continue the chain of actions begun earlier in the ritual: the priest swears the woman and then speaks. The content of his speech is introduced by 'im ("if", H0518A), repeated twice, creating two parallel conditional clauses that together define the woman's innocence. The first condition, 'im-lo' shakhav 'ish 'otakh ("if a man has not lain with you"), uses the qal perfect shaKhav (H7901I) to denote a hypothetical completed act in the past relative to the oath. The second condition, 'im-lo' satit tum'ah tachat 'ishekh ("if you have not turned aside to uncleanness under your husband"), places the woman herself as subject via the second-person feminine perfect saTit (H7847), with tachat (H8478G) construct before 'ishekh ("your husband", H0376H) indicating the domain of marital authority the text envisions.

The apodosis follows without a connecting particle, moving directly to the niphal imperative hinnaKi (H5352), "be free" — a command form built on a passive/reflexive stem, addressed to the woman as the one who is to be declared clear "from" (min, H9006) the effects of the waters. The final phrase piles up modifiers on "waters" (mei, H4325G construct): hammarim ("the bitter", H4751), hamm'ararim ("the ones that curse", H0779, piel participle), and ha'elleh ("these", H0428) — three attributive layers describing the same object.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the conditional apodosis as a statement rather than a command: non te nocebunt aquæ istæ amarissimæ ("these very bitter waters will not harm you"), where the Hebrew hinnaKi (H5352) is an imperative "be free." The LXX similarly shifts to an imperative-style declaration, athōa isthi ("be innocent"), closer to the Hebrew mood but rendering the causative-curse participle me'ararim (H0779) as epikataromenou ("the one that curses"), a single passive-leaning participle rather than the Hebrew's active piel form.