Numbers 5:29

Summary

Numbers 5:29 introduces itself as the formal heading for the ritual law just described, identifying it as the legal procedure that applies when a wife "turns aside" from her husband's authority and becomes ritually defiled. The verse functions as a summary label, closing the description of the sotah ("straying wife") procedure.

Key words

• torat ("law of", H8451) — feminine singular construct noun; the construct form links it directly to what follows, producing "law of the jealousies," a technical legal heading rather than a general statement about law.
• qenaot ("jealousies", H7068) — feminine plural noun with the definite article ha (H9009). The plural form is notable: Hebrew uses the plural for an abstract concept (jealousy/suspicion), which most translations flatten into a singular "jealousy."
• tisteh ("she will turn aside", H7847) — qal imperfect, third-person feminine singular. The imperfect aspect casts this as a hypothetical, recurring, or future case ("whenever a wife turns aside"), not a report of a single past event.
• tachat ("under", H8478) — masculine singular construct noun meaning literally "under" or "in place of," here governing ishah ("husband", H0376) with the pronominal suffix -h ("her"). It marks the wife's position of subordination to her husband's authority.
• nitma'ah ("she will make herself unclean", H2930) — niphal sequential perfect. The niphal stem carries a passive/reflexive nuance, and the sequential perfect form continues the action begun by tisteh, presenting the two verbs as a linked sequence: turning aside results in defilement.

What the text says

The sentence opens with the demonstrative zot ("this", H2063) pointing back to the preceding legal material, followed immediately by the construct chain torat ha-qenaot, "the law of the jealousies." This construct phrase functions as a rubric or title, a common feature in Hebrew legal texts where a procedure is summarized under a fixed heading.

The relative clause introduced by asher ("that", H0834) then defines the scope of this law: it applies to the case in which a wife (ishah) "turns aside" (tisteh) while positioned "under" (tachat) her husband (ishah + suffix -h). The verb tisteh is in the qal imperfect, giving the clause a conditional, generalizing sense — the law covers any instance fitting this description, not one specific past occurrence. The construction tachat isha-h uses the spatial/relational preposition-noun tachat to express subordination rather than physical location.

The final verb, ve-nitma'ah, is joined by the narrative vav (H9001) and stands in the niphal sequential perfect, marking it as the consequence following from the first verb: the turning-aside leads to, or is defined by, the state of defilement. The niphal stem leaves ambiguous whether the defilement is self-caused, resulting, or inherently passive — the Hebrew grammar itself does not specify agency beyond the wife being the grammatical subject of both verbs.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders tisteh ("she will turn aside") with παραβῇ ("she transgresses/violates"), a verb emphasizing violation of a norm, whereas the Vulgate's declinaverit ("she will decline/turn aside") tracks more closely with the Hebrew's spatial-departure sense. The Hebrew plural qenaot ("jealousies") is rendered as a singular abstract noun in the LXX (ζηλοτυπίας), the Vulgate (zelotypiæ), and modern translations (BSB, RV1909, SBLIBRE), none of which preserve the plural form found in the Hebrew text. The phrase tachat ishah is expressed by the LXX as ὕπανδρος οὖσα ("being under a husband"), restructuring the Hebrew construct phrase into a participial description of status, while the BSB explicitly interprets it as "while under her husband's authority."