Numbers 5:24

Summary

Numbers 5:24 describes the priest making the accused woman drink the water associated with the oath-curse, and the water entering her body. The Hebrew text repeats the pairing of "bitter" and "cursing" language to characterize this water, closing with a phrase that marks the water's transformative effect within her.

Key words

• hishqah ("he will make drink", H8248) — hiphil causative, sequential perfect; the priest is the causal agent forcing the action, continuing the narrative sequence from the previous verses.
• mei ("waters of", H4325) — masculine plural noun in construct state, linking directly to the following adjective to form the phrase "waters of the bitter [things]."
• me'ar'rim ("bring a curse", H0779) — piel (intensive) participle, masculine plural; describes the water as actively and ongoingly cursing, not as a one-time event.
• ba'u ("they will go/enter", H0935) — qal sequential perfect, plural form agreeing with the plural noun mayim ("waters"), since Hebrew treats "water" grammatically as plural.
• lemarim ("to bitter [things]", H4751) — preposition le + adjective, appearing at the very end of the verse; marks a resulting state rather than simply describing the water's prior quality.

What the text says

The verse is built from two sequential perfect clauses (ve-hishqah ... u-va'u ...), a common Biblical Hebrew construction for chaining consequential actions: first the priest's causative act, then the water's own action of entering the woman. The phrase mei ha-marim ha-me'ar'rim ("waters of the bitter [things], the cursing ones") uses a construct chain followed by a piel participle, so the water is defined both by taste (marim, "bitter") and by ongoing effect (me'ar'rim, "cursing"), repeating exactly the phrase from verse 18.

The clause ends with le-marim, using the same root marim but now with the preposition le-, indicating a resulting condition — the water's action culminates "into bitterness" within her, rather than merely restating that the water is bitter. The repetition of the root H4751 at the start and end of the verse frames the whole action as bitterness intensifying through the drinking.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders marim ("bitter") with Greek elegmos ("conviction," "reproof") rather than a taste-word, shifting the water's characterization from physical bitterness to a juridical/moral function of "testing" or "exposing." The Vulgate compresses the verse sharply — "et dabit ei bibere. Quas cum exhauserit" ("and he will give her to drink. When she has drunk them") — omitting the descriptive phrase about "bitter, cursing waters" entirely and merging the action into the following verse's sequence.