The Only Justice

The world is burning.  

Everybody is doing the unthinkable in the name of justice. Protestors are willing to die for justice. Looters are willing to kill for justice. Everyone is looking to the cops, judges, and political leaders to give it to them.  

Are we really looking in the right place? 

In order to find out what is going on in the world, we look to the Torah, and the weekly portion. It tells you everything. In the portion of the Torah we read as the George Floyd protests began, we learn what justice is and how comprehensive it can be.  

The Justice of the Sotah Waters 

Hashem shows us just how important justice is by starting with the most fundamental relationship between people in this world: man and wife. For the sake of justice, He makes the ultimate sacrifice.  

The drinking of the Sotah waters is a supernatural event where a husband who suspects his wife of infidelity can force her to undergo a humiliating process that will change her life irrevocably and permanently in order to clarify once and for all if she cheated, or not. If she admits that she cheated, then she divorces her husband and does not undergo this process. But if she insists that she is innocent, then drinking the Sotah waters enables her to establish her innocence and return to her husband. 

The waters are blessed by G-d to grant life and death – the ultimate form of justice – to everyone involved: the husband, the wife, and her adulterer.  All of them face dire consequences for their actions.  

At first glance, it seems pretty unfair.  

The process is humiliating. The woman is paraded through Holy Temple and stripped of her head covering. That’s like being stripped naked inside a Synagogue. Would you ever want to get close to someone so sick that they would walk naked in Hashem’s house? This is what the wife has to endure whether or not she is actually guilty.  

She then drinks the waters. If she is in fact guilty, her stomach will explode, her insides will extend, and she will die a painful and gruesome death. If she is innocent, she will give birth to a son.  

What about the husband? Why does he get the power to point the finger? Can he do it just to harass her? Can he put her through this if she did nothing more than cook him fish when he wanted steak? Shouldn’t there be some standard of responsibility a man is held to so he doesn’t use this process as a club to hit her with? 

There is.  

First, he must be a mensch (honest and upstanding) in how he treats his wife and his children. If the man is not righteous, the Sotah waters won’t work – even if the wife is guilty! The Midrash warns that if the wayward wife of a wicked man drinks the waters, not only will she survive, but she will have incentive to continue her affair because she might think that the waters are just a “myth,” or cannot hurt her, Hashem forbid.  

If the man is also cheating, then the waters also do nothing. He doesn’t get away with holding her to a higher standard.  

If he is righteous, and the wife is found innocent, she will give birth to a son. If the man doesn’t want another child, he doesn’t have a choice.  

His choice starts the moment he thinks she is being unfaithful. He can talk to her, consult a Rabbi, seek help from friends, family, or G-d forbid, divorce her. To put her through a trial that could kill her – this is a serious decision because if he is wrong, he will father a child with a woman he just tried to put to death.  

What about the Wife? 

It also doesn’t seem fair that the woman is the only one to pay for her infidelities.  

What if the man beats her? What if he neglects her? What if he is charming to his secretary but comes home “too exhausted” to give her attention? Justice demands that these mitigating circumstances should be enough to spare her life.  

While she will pay if she betrays him because adultery is a serious sin carrying serious consequences, she will not pay for her sins with the gruesome death of the Sotah waters. Her husband isn’t righteous so they won’t work.   

Hashem’s Justice Reaches Everywhere 

What about the person who violated the man’s wife? The ATFAT principle, A Turn for a Turn, shines in full glory.  

This man ruined a family, but doesn’t have to bear the burden of any of the consequences. The husband and wife are destroyed. Their children’s lives are permanently damaged. And he just continues on as if nothing happened… 

He could look at the man whose wife he just violated and laugh at him while thinking to himself, “What are you gonna do about it?” 

Hashem, in His justice, makes this man powerless. His life is now at the complete mercy of the man whose wife he violated. He has absolutely no control over his next breath.  

If the husband decides to put his wife through the Sotah judgment and she is guilty: The moment she drinks the waters, he dies with her at the same time. 

This man may never know that charges were brought against the woman he was having an affair with. He might have forgotten her months ago. He can be sitting next to a co-worker drinking a Red-Bull talking about the basketball game last night, and a second later his stomach explodes.  

This is justice.  

This is how dearly our Father cares for the sanctity and love of a family. This is how much He demands justice for all the inhabitants of His world. The laws He set for both Jews and non-Jews demand justice for all.  

If we will not produce a just world, He will shake Heaven and Earth to make one.  

Our job is to have faith and remember the words we recite three times a day in the Shemonei Esrei prayers:  

Remove from us sorrow and groan; and reign over us – You, Hashem alone – with kindness and compassion, and justify us through judgment. Blessed are You, Hashem, the King Who loves righteousness and judgment.  

Justice will prevail for everyone! He guarantees it.  

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David Ben Horin lives in Israel with his wife and children.