Numbers 5:20

Summary

This verse continues the conditional oath addressed to a woman suspected of adultery: it states the accusation that must be true for the following curse to apply — that she turned aside from her husband, became defiled, and that another man had sexual relations with her.

Key words

• sa.Tit ("you have turned aside", H7847) — qal perfect, 2nd person feminine. A completed action describing deviation, here used for marital unfaithfulness rather than physical wandering.
• nit.Met ("you have made yourself unclean", H2930A) — niphal perfect. The niphal stem marks the woman as the one affected by the state of impurity, without specifying whether she caused it herself or it was done to her.
• i.yi.Ten ("and he has given", H5414O) — qal with narrative vav, shifting the subject from the woman to "a man" ('ish, H0376G) and advancing the sequence of the accusation.
• she.kha.ve.T ("his copulation", H7903) — feminine singular construct noun with pronominal suffix "his" (H9023), governed by the direct-object marker 'et (H0853). This is an idiomatic expression, literally "his lying-down," functioning as a euphemism for sexual intercourse.
• bal.'a.Dei ("except", H1107) — construct form meaning "apart from," introducing the exclusion clause "apart from your husband" ('i.She-kh, H0376H + H9022).

What the text says

The verse is built as a chain of two conditional clauses introduced by ki ("if", H3588A), both describing the woman's own state — sa.Tit ("turned aside") and nit.Met ("made unclean") — before a third clause, introduced by the narrative vav on i.yi.Ten, shifts grammatical subject to "a man" ('ish). This structure separates the woman's condition from the man's action: first her turning aside and defilement are stated, then the specific act of another man is named.

The idiom 'et-shekhavto ("his copulation") uses the construct noun shekhavet (H7903) with a possessive suffix, marked as a direct object by 'et. This construction avoids a direct verb for intercourse, instead treating the act itself as a "thing given" (natan, H5414O) by the man "in you" (ba-kh, from H9003 + H9032). The final phrase mibbal'adei 'ishekh ("apart from your husband") uses the construct bal'adei (H1107) to exclude the legitimate husband from the accusation, clarifying that the described act involves someone other than him.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders sa.Tit ("you have turned aside") with παραβέβηκας ("you have transgressed") combined with the participial phrase ὕπανδρος οὖσα ("being under a husband"), making explicit the marital status that the Hebrew tachat 'ishekh ("under your husband") conveys more compactly through the construct noun tachat (H8478G). The Vulgate's declinasti a viro tuo ("you have declined from your husband") similarly interprets tachat as departure "from" rather than the Hebrew's spatial sense of "under." The Hebrew idiom natan et-shekhavto ("gave his lying") is rendered by both LXX (ἔδωκέν τις τὴν κοίτην αὐτοῦ) and Vulgate (concubuisti cum altero viro) with more direct verbs for sexual relations, losing the Hebrew's euphemistic "giving" construction.