“The priest shall take a handful from the meal offering, its memorial portion, and burn it upon the altar, and then he shall give the woman the water to drink” (Numbers 5:26). “The priest shall take a handful from the meal offering…” – from the attached meal offering; it should not be placed in two vessels when he takes a handful. “And burn it upon the altar” – from what is burned, that we will expound later.79See section 39, which explains that only a handful is placed on the altar.
How does he burn it? He salts it and places it upon the fire, as it is written: “All your meal offerings [you shall salt with salt]” (Leviticus 2:13). “And then he shall give the woman the water to drink” – why is the verse stated? Was it not already stated: “He shall give the woman to drink” (Numbers 5:24)?
It is, rather, to include one whose imprint is visible.80If the ink is not completely erased from the scroll, he must immerse it again, and only then give the woman to drink. “He shall give her the water to drink, and it will be, if she was defiled and committed trespass against her husband, the water that causes curse will enter her for bitterness, and her belly will distend, and her thigh will fall, and the woman will become a curse among her people” (Numbers 5:27).
“He shall give her the water to drink” – why is it stated? It is to say to you that if the scroll was erased and she said: I will not drink, Rabbi Eliezer would say that one strikes her with the width of a sword, forces her mouth open, and gives her to drink against her will. “It will be, if she was defiled” – whether the relations were natural or unnatural. “And committed trespass against her husband” – the verse relates that the trespass against the husband is the cause.
Because we find defilement regarding the rest of the forbidden relations, is it perhaps that if she were defiled by one of them that the water would examine her? The verse states: “And committed trespass against her husband” – the trespass against the husband causes her to be examined. “The water…will enter her” – it teaches that it seeps into all her limbs. “Her belly will distend…” – one verse says: “In the Lord causing your thigh to fall [and your belly to distend]” (Numbers 5:21); thigh preceded belly.
And one verse says: “And her belly will distend, and her thigh will fall”; belly preceded thigh. The Rabbis say: When he cursed, he cursed the thigh and then the belly, just as she began the transgression initially. When the water examines, it examines along its path. They raised an objection: Regarding the curse, too, it is written: “To cause the belly to distend and the thigh to collapse” (Numbers 5:22).
That is not a contradiction. That is that the priest informs her that the belly is first and then the thigh, so as not to disparage the water of bitterness. “The woman will become a curse among her people” – she will be notorious among everyone.