What Does Numbers 5:20 Mean?
But if you have turned aside to another instead of your husband, and if you are soiled, and some man has lain down with you beside your husband;
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
But if thou hast gone aside to another instead of thy husband, and if thou be defiled, and some man have lain with thee beside thine husband:THE KEY
Hebrew uses אִישׁ (ish, man or husband) for both “thy husband” and “some man,” making the alleged breach a shift in relation to the same word.
THE MEANING
You hear a conditional accusation: you have turned aside from your husband, become defiled, and another man has lain with you outside that bond. The sentence ties a woman’s sexual status to her husband’s claim and names the alleged breach through bodily impurity.
THE ROOT
שָׂטִית
satit
GROWS FROM
שׂטה
satah
to turn aside or deviate
“turned aside” in this verse is satit. The verb names the alleged act as turning away; שׂוֹטָה (sotah, one who turns aside) is a derived form used for the woman at the center of this case. The root makes deviation the charge’s organizing idea, while the repeated אִישׁ (ish, man or husband) leaves the relationship between the two men visible beneath the English wording.
ALSO GROWS
satah: to turn aside or deviate
שָׂטָה
This is the base verb behind “gone aside,” naming the alleged breach as a change of direction.
sotah: a woman who has turned aside
שׂוֹטָה
This derived form names the person through the same act of turning aside.
נִטְמֵאת
nitme't
GROWS FROM
טמא
to be or become ritually impure
“soiled” in this verse is nitme't. The verse places defilement between the turning aside and the man’s lying with her, so the accusation includes a named bodily condition as well as an alleged act. The root’s related forms show that “defiled” belongs to a wider vocabulary of impurity, not just a description of the sexual encounter.
ALSO GROWS
tamei: unclean or impure
טָמֵא
This adjective describes the condition the verse says the woman has entered.
tum'ah: impurity or uncleanness
טֻמְאָה
This noun makes the condition named by “defiled” part of a broader category.
THE PATTERN
Scripture frames sexual union as a bond with bodily and relational consequence, not as an isolated act.
Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother, and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.Yet you say, "Why?" Because the LORD has been witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously. Yet she is the one joined to you, the wife of your covenant.Or have you not seen that the one glued to a seller of bodies is one body? For, he says, the two will be one flesh.THE THREAD
Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, If any man's wife turns aside, and crosses over against him,“Go aside” in Numbers 5:12 uses the same root שׂטה (satah, turn aside) as “gone aside” here. The repeated root names the alleged departure at the start of the charge and again as the condition is spelled out.
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