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Iyun in Sota -
Lesson 19

Iyun Masechet Sota: 18a

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The next step in the sota process is the oath that the kohen administers to the woman.  The most striking fact regarding this element of the ceremony is the glaring redundancy in the Torah's description:

 

"The kohen shall administer the oath to her and he shall say to the woman if no man has slept with you and if you have not strayed from your husband to become tamei, you shall be absolved from the damning waters. [But] if you have strayed from your husband and have been defiled by a man who has slept with you aside from your husband - the kohen shall administer the oath of damnation to the woman and he shall say to the woman let God set you as a curse and an oath among the people when He shall smite down your hips and burst your stomach.  And the waters shall enter your intestine to burst your stomach and smite your hips.  The woman shall respond amen amen."

 

As we can readily see, the administration of the oath is repeated twice, a fact that R.  Zeira and Rava attempt to explain.  R.  Zeira suggests that there are two oaths that the woman must accept - the first is administered prior to the writing of the megilla while the latter follows the dissolution of the megilla in the water.  Rava, though, disagrees, since both appear in the Torah's description of the sota ceremony prior to the dissolution of the text in the water.  Since the pesukim describing the oaths form a continuous text, Rava refuses to allow for a time gap between them.  Therefore, rather than searching for a chronological distinction, Rava chooses to highlight the conceptual difference between the two descriptions.  The former mentions a standard oath while the latter describes it as an oath of damnation that is intended to warn the woman of the consequences of the tum'a.

 

If we look at the pesukim, Rava's position is very convincing.  For although we (and the gemara) presented the description of the kohen's administration of the oath as a redundancy that must be explained by postulating a second oath, the plain reading of the text (pshutu shel mikra) is that the latter pasuk is not an additional description of the kohen's actions but the conclusion of the warning to the woman, who is advised that the kohen's administration of the oath shall bring about fatal consequences if she is guilty.  Thus, the context of the second pasuk is the punitive element of damnation within it, and even if we derive a second oath from it, its distinctive characteristic is its condemnation of the woman.

 

Actually, this is not the only duality in the pesukim regarding the oaths that the woman must take.  The Torah also records a dual response of the sota to the kohen: "and the woman shall say amen amen."  This point is addressed by the next Mishna (18a) that explains that the woman must answer a separate amen on the shvuah element and a separate amen on the threat of damnation.

 

The upshot of this, as pointed out by R. Velvel (Soloveitchik) in his correspondence (printed in Chiddushei Maran RI"Z Halevi, p. 161), is that there are not really two oaths but an oath and a sentence of damnation against the sota (if she is guilty) that uses the mechanism of shvuah to grant authority to the judgment.  Thus, the Torah is actually describing two stages in the ceremony; the first is the woman's swearing to her innocence while the other is her recognition and acceptance of the consequences, if she is guilty.  He utilizes this observation to explain the Tosfot in our sugya (18a, d.h. al), who quote two gemarot in masechet Shavout in regard to the sota's answering amen to the kohen's statements.  The first gemara (Shavout 29b) rules that the answering of amen is equivalent to an actual recital of any preceding text, while the second sugya (36a) claims that amen is an acceptance and validation of a statement.  R. Velvel is bothered by Tosfot's need to quote a second source that seems to add nothing beyond what is already known from the first.  Actually, as his answer makes clear, the second source is not merely superfluous; it is a competing claim that that is in contradiction to the first quote.  The meaning of the first is that the answering amen of the sota transforms the oath into HER oath.  By uttering amen after the kohen, she is considered to have actually recited the text and not only to have heard it from another.  The latter sugya, though, describes a halakhic mechanism in which one party validates and agrees to another party's statement.  It is the acceptance and ratification of somebody else's statement, rather than the appropriation of the statement as her own, that is achieved in this case. 

 

The solution to this problem is that there are two events taking place in the sota ceremony that require different responses from the sota.  The first is an oath in which she claims her innocence and guarantees her husband of her loyalty, while the second is a warning that the kohen issues to her.  Thus, her recital of amen serves two distinct purposes.  The first amen transforms the kohen's statement into a personal oath that she is considered to have recited herself, while the second amen is her acceptance of the kohen's warning.  Therefore, Tosfot cite both sources; the first to prove that amen can create a personal statement and the second to establish that amen is a mechanism of acceptance and ratification of a statement made by another person.

 

This point is also reflected in a machloket between R. Tam and the Ran regarding the nature of the sota's oath.  The Ran (Nedarim 2a, d"h u'shvuot) quotes R. Tam's opinion that the requirement of God's name to validate an oath is only in oaths imposed upon a person by others ("mushba mepi acherim") but not if a person swears on his own initiative ("mushba mepi atzmo").  R. Tam explains his position by pointing out that the only source that indicates the need for a Holy Name in an oath is the case of sota, which is an oath imposed by others.  The Ran strongly rejects this claim, wondering in amazement how such a scholar as R. Tam could utter such a claim ("utmaihani ulav, peh kadosh eich amar davar zeh?!") since the case of sota is not an imposed shvuah but an oath that the sota swears on her own. The Ran, in support of this claim, quotes the gemara in Shavout 29b regarding amen that is quoted by Tosfot.

 

The issue at stake between the Ran and R. Tam hinges upon the previous point, for the essence of their argument would seem to be the role of the oath within the context of the sota ceremony.  Is its focus the metaphysical perspective of tum'a and its consequences that visit upon her divine punishment, or, as we have queried countless times in this series of shiurim, does it revolve around the human drama of distrust and suspicion between a jealous husband and a suspect wife that must be clarified.  In R. Tam's understanding, the shvuah relates to the element of divine judgment.  It is not the woman swearing innocence to her spouse but the kohen, the divinely appointed representative of the KBH to uphold standards of kedusha, who administers the oath as a warning and threat to the sota.  The Ran, though, conceived of the oath as a proclamation of conjugal loyalty that the wife must proclaim to the man; therefore, the oath must be her personal statement (which is accomplished through the use of "amen" as appropriation of another's statement as one's own). 

 

Thus, if we understand the machloket as inclusive and relating to both of the shvuot mentioned in the pesukim, as R. Velvel does in his discussion of the topic, we arrive at the conclusion that the nature of the oath in the sota ceremony is the subject of a dispute between R. Tam and the Ran, for although in practice there is a double oath, they are conceptually of the same cloth.

 

However, the Ran need not argue that there is only a personal oath.  He can admit that there is an oath imposed by the kohen in addition to the personal vow of the woman, yet this does not invalidate his question, since all he needs to prove for his purposes is that a personal oath requiring God's Name also exists in sota.  Therefore, he can accept the model of a dual oath in sota in which the role of the first is to clear the air between husband and wife, while the second serves a judicial capacity as an oath of damnation.  R. Tam, however, must limit himself conceptually to a single oath imposed by the kohen upon the woman.

 

This is predicated upon a premise that both oaths of the sota require the Name.  R. Velvel raises the possibility that only the latter oath requires it.  He rejects this possibility as totally unreasonable since there is no basis either logically or textually to justify such a distinction.  However, such a suggestion is eminently reasonable and can be justified either by the logic of hilkhot shvuah or hilkhot sota.  The former interpretation is beyond the scope of our present discussion, but is a very interesting suggestion that would create a dual source of authority for oaths.  The latter is what concerns us here.  If indeed is is the kohen's oath of damnation that requires the Name of God, but not the sota's personal oath, this is due to the fact that the need for the Name is rooted in its role as a threatening oath and not as a personal vow.  The Name is part of the mechanism of the oath as an agent of damnation rather than an intrinsic part of the oath apparatus.  R. Velvel himself proves that there is a unique need in the sota ceremony for the Name in the oath that is unrelated to other vows from the fact that the unique Holy Name of four letters (the Shem HaMephrash or Tetragrammaton) is used in the sota ceremony (see Shavout 35b).  This, too, is due to its nature as an oath of damnation since less direct forms of attributes suffice for the purpose of validating an oath.

 

Thus, we can conclude that R. Tam, who derives the halakhot of regular oaths from sota, does not view the regulations of the second oath as unique to the sota ceremony's nature as an agent of damnation, while the Ran considered the special halakhot of the second oath as reflecting the particular nature of the sota ceremony alone.

 

Let us now return to R. Zeira's position that there are two oaths, one that is taken prior to the dissolution of the megilla in the water while the second is undertaken afterwards.  This seems to be a very problematic suggestion, for as Rava points out, there is no basis whatsoever in the pesukim to warrant an interpretation that would rearrange the sequence of events that the Torah describes.  In light of the above, let us suggest that R. Zeira accepted Rava's analysis regarding the different roles of the two oaths within the context of the sota ceremony and that this is what enabled him to posit that the first oath is prior to the erasing of the megilla.  R. Zeira apparently considered the dissolution of the text into the water as belonging to the punitive stage of the ceremony; therefore, if the role of the first oath is to relate to the personal relationship between the woman and her husband, it must be in the earlier stage that deals with the personal issues and not in the later stages, despite the textual concerns raised by Rava.

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