Numbers 5:27

Summary

Numbers 5:27 describes the physical outcome for the woman after she drinks the "waters of bitterness," contingent on her guilt: if she has defiled herself and acted unfaithfully against her husband, the water will produce bodily effects (swelling belly, falling thigh) and she will become "a curse" among her people. The verse is built as a chain of sequential (vav-consecutive) perfect verbs describing what happens step by step once the conditional clause is triggered.

Key words

• hishqah ("he will make drink", H8248H) — hiphil (causative) form: the subject causes her to drink, rather than drinking himself; this frames the priest's action as the initiating cause of the whole sequence.
• nit.me'ah ("she has made herself unclean", H2930A) — niphal (passive/reflexive) perfect, marking a completed state of defilement rather than an ongoing action; it sets up the condition governing everything that follows.
• tim'ol ma'al ("she has acted unfaithfully" + "unfaithfulness", H4603/H4604) — a verb paired with its own cognate noun (ma'al from the same root as the verb), intensifying the sense of betrayal "against her husband" (be-ishah, H0376H, construct with suffix "her husband").
• me'ararim ("bring a curse", H0779) — piel (intensive) participle, masculine plural, describing the waters as continuously/actively "cursing," not a one-time act; it modifies ha-mayim ("the waters," H4325G).
• le-alah ("into a curse", H0423) — the woman's resulting identity is expressed with the preposition le ("into/as") plus the noun alah ("curse"), indicating a transformation of status, not merely a punishment inflicted on her.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is a long chain of verbs in the sequential perfect (vav + perfect continuing narrative sequence): hishqah ("he will make her drink"), hayetah ("she will be"), ba'u ("they will go/enter"), tzavtah ("it will swell"), naflah ("it will fall"), hayetah ("she will become"). This chain creates a cause-and-effect sequence contingent on the conditional clause introduced by 'im ("if") plus two perfect verbs, nit.me'ah and tim'ol, which describe completed prior actions (defilement, unfaithfulness) as the trigger condition. The construct chains — ishah ("husband of-her"), bitnah ("belly of-her"), yerekhah ("thigh of-her"), amah ("people of-her") — repeatedly attach the pronominal suffix -ah ("her") to body parts and relations, keeping grammatical focus tightly on the woman throughout the sequence of consequences.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew tim'ol ma'al ("she acted unfaithfully," H4603/H4604) is rendered in the LXX as λήθη λάθῃ ("she deceived/forgot by stealth"), a different semantic emphasis (concealment) rather than "unfaithfulness." For naflah ("it will fall," H5307G, describing the thigh), the LXX has διαπεσεῖται ("will fall through/collapse") while the Vulgate has computrescet ("will rot/decay") — three distinct verbs (fall / collapse / rot) for the same Hebrew term. The Vulgate also adds "et in exemplum omni populo" ("and as an example to all the people"), an addition not present in the Hebrew bə-qerev ammah ("in the midst of her people," H7130G/H5971A), which states only location, not exemplary function.