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© 2017 John D. Brey.

As Professor Menahem Haran of Hebrew University Jerusalem points out, there's a material gradation associated with the level of holiness applied to any given sacred article in the temple. The more holy it is, the purer the metal used in its manufacture. In the Tanakh "gold" represents or symbolizes the highest "holiness.” The holiest item in the temple is the Ark of the Covenant, which is wood overlaid with pure gold. Likewise, in Daniel's vision, the statue has a golden head, a silver chest, bronze loins, and iron and clay feet. This is the gradation of holiness so far as metals in the bible are concerned. Iron is nearly equal to earth, bronze is as valuable as the genitals, silver the heart, or chest, and gold is the head of all metals. Gold is woven into the priestly garments.  

With these material gradations in mind it doesn’t seem absurd to suggest that when Moses grinds down the golden-calf, sprinkling it in the running water, thereby manufacturing “gold water,” his actual goal is to produce “holy water.”-----As fate would have it, that word, "holy water" (קדשימ מים) is a hapax legomenon: it's found only one time in the Tanakh. 

This “holy water,” qadosh mayim, is found at the sotah-water passage: Numbers 5:16. The "holy water" is the base-solution used to ferret out whether a woman has cheated on her husband behind his back. This is highly significant in the context of Moses’ manufacturing “holy water” at Horeb since Horeb is fancied the marriage of God and Israel, implying the golden-calf fiasco is Israel cheating on God before the ink on the ketubah dries. And since Moses describes the use of "holy water" as the means for determining who in Israel is faithful and who is not, it's difficult to ignore the likelihood that Moses is manufacturing "holy water" to test Israel’s fidelity after the golden-calf fiasco. 

The "holy water” at Numbers 5:16 is initially spelled מים mayim. But after the "dust of the tabernacle floor" is added to the water the word changes to מרים miriam. This formula is interesting since in Jewish midrashim Adam is created from the same dust of the tabernacle floor that’s added to the sotah-water (the “bitter” water) at Numbers 5:16.

8. . . . An altar of earth (adamah) thou shalt make unto me (Ex. xx,21). The Holy One, blessed be He, said: `Behold I will create him from the place of his atonement, and may he endure!" 

Midrash Rabbah, Bereshith XIV.8.

Adam was created from the place of his atonement. He's created from dust from the tabernacle floor. Dust mingled with the blood of the sacrifice. Coincidentally, his name means God's blood: Alef---dalet-mem. He’s also the head, or first, of humanity, the reish or rosh. He represents the "firstborn" rosh, though he’s not really “born.” That's reserved for the second-Adam: the firstborn of creation, the first born–Adam of creation.

If we place the dust of the earth into the holy water (which is what occurs in Genesis chapter two and Numbers chapter five) the holy water become the "bitter water" that's spelled as "water" that now has a reish in its midsection. When we place the reish ר (firstborn) into the water mayim מים  (which is precisely what occurs in Numbers 5:17), we get the word for water “mayim,” which after the dust of the tabernacle floor is added becomes “Miriam.” -----In Numbers 5:17, the word מים transforms into מרים after the second Adam, the first--born Adam, of creation, the rosh ר is placed inside the water. Mind you this is the water that's going to be in the woman's belly momentarily.

The Hebrew word מרים spells "Mary." -----Mary is the belly where the first born-Adam of creation is found. And he's found when the blood of circumcision (holy water, represented by colloidal-gold) is what conceives the second Adam, who's the first Adam to be born; the Adam whose blood we must all swallow (John 6:53) if we're to have everlasting life inside us.   

Part and parcel of Adam's forming is the fact that the "dust of the earth" (from the tabernacle floor) is mingled with the "breath of life" which the same Jewish midrashim (Midrash Rabbah), claims means "blood." According to Midrash Rabbah, the Hebrew words interpreted "breath of life" mean "blood."

The foregoing is almost too perfect as the prism for interpreting the sotah's bitter ordeal if the "holy water" is interpreted as water from the mikveh. The text gives no direct indication that "holy water" implies the water of the mikveh except the implication that within Judaism no water functions in a capacity that might make it equal "holy water" except for the water of the mikveh.

Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan points out that the mikveh is, or represents, a sanctified womb, and that immersing in its water is very much like immersing in what we would call "holy water." In his essay on the mikveh, Waters of Eden, Rabbi Kaplan notes that the text oddly implies that the waters of Eden (which he equates with the water of the mikveh) run through veins of gold, such that since "gold" represents the highest material gradation of holiness within the Torah, the waters of Eden (the first mikveh)  are literally and symbolically not only "gold water," but as such, they represent "holy water". Even more to the point of this thread is his statement:  

In a sense, therefore, the water [of the mikveh] represents the womb of creation. When a person immerses in the Mikvah, he is placing himself in the state of the world yet unborn, subjecting himself totally to God's creative power. . . We therefore see that immersion in the Mikvah represents renewal and rebirth.

The student of the scripture isn't particularly enlightened by the somewhat obvious fact that the Torah equates "gold water" with being "holy" . . . and thus sanctifying, since in the very passage that the Jewish sages compare to the sotah's bitter ordeal (the gold water of Horeb) Moses unabashedly and undeniably produces holy water by grinding gold into powder and mixing it with the running water Israel will use to cleanse the Egyptian utensils and with which they will themselves immerse.

Moses sprinkles powdered gold into the running stream that's Israel's first mikveh.

Immersion in the mikveh, or in the case of the sotah, having the mikveh water immersed in her, is related to a number of issues (so to say) that must be resolved by the mikveh. The first issue is bodily fluids associated with sexuality: semen or female fluids issuing from the genitals. Secondarily, the leper is immersed in the mikveh. . . Which is to say that not only is the immersion in the holy water of the mikveh directly related to sexual impurity (which is the primary point of the sotah's bitter ordeal), but its related to uncleanness associated with leprosy or similar "afflictions" which are themselves associated with sin and uncleanness.

This is particularly interesting in relationship to Israel passing through the Red-Sea, on "dry ground" after Moses opens the water so that the "dry land" (the dust of the waters of the deep) might be the source for Israel's birth as a nation since the very word for the womb of affliction from whence they just came is the Hebrew word "mizriam" מצרים which is the Hebrew word for "water" מים (which in Hebrew is related to the "womb") with another word in its belly צר. 

This last word, tsaddi-reish, is the word for "affliction" or "bitterness." ----With an ayin added to the end it spells the word "leprosy." -----"Egypt," in Hebrew, is "bitter water," or the "water of affliction," from whence Israel must be rescued and from which the nation is born. Israel is born out of the "bitter water" of affliction: Mizraim מ־צר־ים. 

The letter מ (mem) and the word "water” represent the "mom" and the mother's "womb" in particular. A couple things are important in this respect. The word for the letter mem (its spelling) has no middle letter as would be the case with most other names of letters. Since the mem represents the "womb," it's significant that the mem is a womb not entered by any other letter: it's a closed-womb.

Throughout Jewish thought, to include the Talmud, the letter yod is the mark, or sign, of circumcision. The word "water" (which represents the "mom" or "womb") is spelled like the name of the mem but with the mark of circumcision in its belly מים. The letter yod is taught (in mystical circles) to be a circumcised vav (the vav symbolizing "man"). The yod is literally a vav cut down to size: ו becomes י. The yod is a circumcised vav, which means a Jewish womb is a womb with a yod in it rather than a vav. . . If the yod in מים is replaced with a vav מום we get the word for "blemish." A Gentile womb is blemished by the fact that a vav rather than a circumcised vav (a yod) is in the womb of the word used for a "womb."

Furthermore, according to the Talmud (BT Shabat 104a), the open mem is an innovation. The original mem was a closed-mem. It was closed until the desecration of the body originally designed perfect by God.  A desecration that takes place in Genesis 2:21.

According to Jewish thought, the closed-mem represents the arrival of Messiah. And according to Professor Gershom Scholem, if not for Genesis 2:21 (and its ramifications) Messiah would have been the first human being born to man. Which justifies the idea of the closed-mem representing the arrival of Messiah, and the closed-mem being the original-mem, with the open-mem being a blemish on God's original design.

The sanctified Jewish firstborn will open a closed-mem. The open-mem is Cain being re-mem-bered as the product of the innovation that is a mem being opened prior to birth rather at the point of birth as God would have it.

At Numbers 5:17 (the narrative of the "bitter water") the word translated "floor" is qarqa קרקע. -----Dust from this qarga or tabernacle floor is placed in the holy water to produce the "bitter water." The combination of the dust from the tabernacle floor and holy water produces the so-called "bitter water" associated with the sotah (the unfaithful wife).

Rabbi Samson Hirsch points out that this particular word for "floor" comes from the root רקע which means, “to stamp down forcefully, to trample with the feet." ----I.e., to "crush," or "pulverize." He next points out that many times the word is used for the, קרשע הכית "the floor of the Temple." -----In 1 Kings where the word is used for the Temple floor we're told the Temple floor is overlaid with gold. Likewise, all the appurtenances of the tabernacle are made of gold. The priest's garment has gold woven in with the threads such that gold is everywhere. 

Since many Jewish sages notice the similarities between the sotah water, and the golden-calf fiasco, it's not surprising to note that the sotah water ("bitter water") is made by placing pulverized, powdered, crushed, gold dust (from the tabernacle floor), into holy water forming the same elixir Moses produces when he pulverizes the golden-calf and places it in the water running from the stream.

. . . In all but one place that the word קרקע is used for "floor," it speaks of the tabernacle or the Temple floor. The one other place, Amos 9:3, speaks of the "depths of the earth," or the, "floor of the sea." -----". . . in Tehillim 139:15 the woman's womb, in which the fetus is formed, is called `the depths of the earth' “(Hirsch Chumash at Numbers 5:17).

The careful reader of the Tanakh can't help but observe an exegetical principle that renders numerous revelatory gems, i.e., the parallel between the temple, the house, and the bride/wife. The womb is the depths of the earth, as is the most holy place in the temple. Rashi calls the most holy place of God's house the "bridal chamber" where the supernal groom and bride unite. 

How appropriate then that the dust of the tabernacle/temple floor, which is (or represents) the depths of the earth, the place of the even ha shtiyya stone (the foundation stone) should be made to reside in the Jewish bride's most holy place ----her "belly" ----as symbolic of her womb, the bridal chamber where she and her groom first unite.

According to a rabbinic tradition, when Moses made the Israelites drink this potion, he was testing them to determine who had betrayed the Torah by worshiping the Golden Calf, as a suspected straying wife is tested by being made to drink a potion. If the wife had committed adultery, her belly will swell and her thigh sag (Numbers 5:27). 

Professor Daniel Matt, commentary on sotah, found in Pritzker Edition Zohar, Shemini 3:38b (Vol. VII, p. 229).

Rabbi Elie Munk points out one of the most important keys to the whole sotah water episode: 

The Zohar answers that the ideal fulfillment of the Kohen's role occurs if the woman is innocent rather than guilty. The Kohen writes the Name of Hashem in the scroll, forward and then in reverse. If the woman is innocent, the first inscription would take effect. Then the bitter water would become sweet and the woman would be blessed with the birth of a male child. But if she was guilty, then the Name written in reverse would take effect and the bitter water would render its verdict. 

The Call of the Torah, Bamidbar (Numbers) 5:24.

The primary concern of the sotah water episode concerns the womb of the woman. According to the rabbis that womb is either going to "swell" through the contamination of the "bitter water" ----or else the so-called "bitter water" is going to bless her with a firstborn male child. 

According to Rabbi Hirsch, if the woman is found innocent: "Blessing will come to the woman's womb, for which `fertile earth' is a metaphor. If until now she has been childless, now she will receive the blessing of children. If until now she would give birth in pain, now she will give birth with ease (Sotah 26a)."

Adding to what's implied above, the Zohar says: 

Come and see: If the woman is found innocent, these waters enter [125b] and turn sweet, cleansing her, remaining within her until she conceives. Once she conceives, they beautify the embryo in her womb, and a beautiful son emerges, clean, without any blemish. If not, those waters enter her, and she smells an odor of filth, and those waters turn into a serpent in her womb. By that which she corrupted herself, she is punished, and her shame is shown to all . . . ..

Pritzker Edition Zohar, Naso, 3:125b (Vol. VIII, p. 300).

The commentary focuses on the fact that if the woman is guilty, her "belly swells," while if she's innocent, she gives birth to a male child "clean, without any blemish." Two words are written on the scroll that's washed off into the holy water with the gold dust:

The Kohen writes the Name of Hashem in the scroll, forward and then in reverse. If the woman is innocent, the first inscription would take effect. Then the bitter water would become sweet and the woman would be blessed with the birth of a male child. But if she was guilty, then the Name written in reverse would take effect and the bitter water would render its verdict.

The Call of the Torah, Bamidbar (Numbers) 5:24.

There's a word that escapes the rabbis that fits too perfect in their midrashic scheme. It's the word ראש (rosh, "firstborn"). If the woman is innocent, the word ראש means she’ll birth the Jewish firstborn whose embryo is beautiful, clean, and without blemish. But if she's guilty the word is reversed שאר (seor, "leaven") and her belly swells like leavened bread. 

It seems like it would be pretty clear to anyone who takes the scripture seriously that the big tadoo about finding out the faithfulness or lack thereof of the Jewish wife has its sights set on a much bigger problem, and thus a more fundamental solution (than just the "bitter water")? For instance, Rabbi Samson Hirsch, paraphrasing Sotah 26a, says:

Blessing will come to the woman's womb, for which `fertile earth' is a metaphor. If until now she has been childless, now she will receive the blessing of children. If until now she would give birth in pain, now she will give birth with ease (Sotah 26a).

This is prelapse Eve! ----The penalty for her lapse, her sin, was painful childbirth. Which she passed down to all her daughters. ----Until this. -----Which is to say that if until now the daughters of Eve gave birth in pain, now, with the womb filled with "bitter water," they'll give birth as Eve would have given birth but for the original sin of phallic-sex (which was punished with painful childbirth).

Come and see: If the woman is found innocent, these waters enter [125b] and turn sweet, cleansing her, remaining within her until she conceives. Once she conceives, they beautify the embryo in her womb, and a beautiful son emerges, clean, without any blemish. If not, those waters enter her, and she smells an odor of filth, and those waters turn into a serpent in her womb. By that which she corrupted herself, she is punished, and her shame is shown to all . . . .. 

Pritzker Edition Zohar, Naso, 3:125b (Vol. VIII, p. 300).

When the serpent copulated with Eve, he injected her with זוהמא (zohama), filth, [or slime, lust]. Israel, who stood at Mount Sinai---their filth ceased.

Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot 103b.

Israel stands at Sinai as Eve stood before the serpent. No filth. No slime, no lust. No sweat, no strain, no drain. ----But then comes the golden-calf fiasco, which smells ----like a corporate version of Eve's engagement with the serpent. Before the calf, Israel is a clean virgin ready to consummate her marriage to her groom. After the engagement, she has to be tested with the "bitter water" to find out whether, should her groom consummate the wedding, he should expect the birth of the filthy murderer Cain, or the offspring of an embryo cleaned, cleanable, and purified, by the waters of Eden?

Rashi and the sages recognize something of a problem with the sotah-water episode. Why should the sotah-water make the innocent woman pregnant? 

Rashi was troubled by the following question: When the priest warns the sotah about the effect of the "bitter" waters, he makes a detailed statement of the possible results, both positive and negative: "If a man has not slept with you. . . then (you will) be absolved through these `bitter,' afflictive waters. But if you have indeed gone astray . . . (then you will choke!)" (v. 19-20). Why then, on reaching verse 28 do we discover a new detail which was omitted by the priest, that the sotah is given a totally unexpected reward, "she will bear children." 

Rabbi Menachem Schneerson in The Gutnick Edition Chumash.

How do the "bitter waters" make the innocent woman pregnant? The Talmud exhausts no small amount of dialogue . . . and some extremely questionable solutions, to the problem of the "bitter water's" ability to make a woman pregnant. Rabbi Akiva suggests the statement that she will become pregnant means that "if she was barren she will become pregnant." ---- But nothing in the text says or implies anything about a "barren" woman. The implication that the sotah-water makes a woman pregnant seems to need some tweaking since a woman getting pregnant without semen is a kerygmatic bridge just a tad too far.

The same Talmud has Rabbi Yishma'el pointing out the problem with Rabbi Akiva's solution to a woman becoming pregnant without semen. He says, " If so, then all the barren women in the world will seclude themselves [with other men, but not commit adultery] and then become pregnant [from drinking the bitter waters], and any woman who did not seclude herself [with another man] will be the loser!"

Rabbi Yishma'el takes his own stab at the problem. He claims that if a woman formerly gave birth with pain, she will have painless births. But Tosfos [Talmud commentary] points out that it seems one could turn Rabbi Yishma'el' answer to Rabbi Akiva on Rabbi Yishma'el. Why not drink the sotah water to have painless childbirth?

What's going on here? Why are brilliant Rabbi's tripping over themselves about the plain meaning of the text of scripture that claims a woman will become pregnant without semen? What's so frightening about the possibility of a woman becoming pregnant without semen? We can imagine the brilliant Rabbi's doing their thing by asking: "What if she's made to drink the sotah-solution prior to even consummating her relationship to her legal groom? What if a betrothed virgin is made to drink the sotah-water and becomes pregnant?"

. . . Could it be that the first solutions are an uncharacteristically sloppy attempt not to ask the later question since these same Rabbis are wont to compare the sotah episode with the sprinkling of the golden-calf in the water Israel is made to drink to test her faithfulness to her betrothed groom before they've even consummated their wedding: 

God warned His "wife," the Jewish people, not to be secluded with another "man" when He said the words: "You shall not have any other deities (so long as I exist)" (Shemos 20:3). 

The Gutnick Edition Chumash at the sotah passage.

God tells Moses he will punish those who are guilty in the golden-calf fiasco such that Moses prepares the solution necessary to make the determination of who is and who isn't guilty. The Talmud, with most other good midrashim, to include the Zohar, links Moses' sprinkling the pulverized golden-calf into the stream from which Israel drinks with the sotah water episode in Numbers chapter 5. The link is too obvious to ignore.

Israel is a betrothed virgin when she drinks the sotah-water. Those guilty of the golden-calf fiasco will be punished and divorced from God, while those who are innocent will become pregnant from the sotah-water and will give birth to God's firstborn Son through a process that transposes the "bitter waters" (waters of Miriam) over semen such that the product of this divine conception will be called God's Son conceived in the virgin "womb of Mary" (מרים) since the word "waters" (mayim) represents the womb, and the sotah-water is called the "waters of bitterness" which in translation is the "waters of Mary," which is the womb of Mary.

Concerning the case of the guilty parties the text doesn't really say they’re made barren. Quite the opposite. Their belly swells (they too become pregnant) and give birth to the nephil (Cain) who's the father of the nephilim (the “fallen” ones). The word in the text is nephil (“fallen”). Her belly swells (i.e., she becomes pregnant) and her thigh "falls" (nephil).

Genesis 46:26 says that all the souls that came with Jacob into Egypt came out of his "thigh." -----Numbers 5:27 suggests therefore that the adulteress will become pregnant and the fruit of that pregnancy will come out of her "thigh" as a "fallen" one (one like Cain and the nephilim). The whole story is really about Eve, or Lilith, who’s the first adulteress. She cheated on Adam before Adam even consummated their marriage. Her adultery caused Cain to "fall" (nephil) from her "thigh" as the father of the nephilim (the demon-horde in Genesis 6).

Adam was forced to divorce Eve (Lilith) and find a new wife. 

Midrashim suggests that Eve may have left with Cain when he was exiled from Adam. Eve is never mentioned again after the expulsion from the Garden and the birth of Cain. Adam remarries and has the first son in his own likeness: Seth.

AND THE SPIRIT OF JEALOUSY COME UPON HIM (v, 14), For I the Lord your God am a jealous God (Ex. xx, 5). AND HE BE JEALOUS OF HIS WIFE; as you read, Go get thee down; for they people . . . have dealt corruptly, etc. (Ex. xxxii, 7). AND SHE BE DEFILED, as you read, And have worshipped it, and have sacrificed unto it (ib. xxxii, 8). OR IF THE SPIRIT OF JEALOUSY COME UPON HIM, AND HE BE JEALOUS OF HIS WIFE, AND SHE BE NOT DEFILED; for there were many righteous among them, but the Holy One, blessed be He, was incensed against them all, intending to consume the good with the bad; as it says, Now therefore let me alone, that My wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them (Ex. xxxii, 10). THEN SHALL THE MAN BRING (v, 15), i.e., the Holy One, blessed be He; HIS WIFE (ib.), viz. Israel, UNTO THE PRIEST (ib.), namely to Moses who was a priest all the seven days of consecration, and of whom it says, Moses and Aaron among His priests (Ps. xcix, 6).

Midrash Rabbah, Bemidbar-Naso IX 45-49).

Throughout the entire discussion of the sotah-water episode, Midrash Rabbah takes every statement and juxtaposes it with Moses and the golden-calf fiasco showing with scripture that they're the same thing: 

AND THE PRIEST SHALL TAKE (v, 17): `priest' alludes to Moses; HOLY WATER (ib): for the sanctification of the name of the Holy One, blessed be He. Hence it is written, And I took . . . the calf . . . and beat it in pieces . . . and I cast the dust thereof into the brook that descended out of the mount (Deut. ix, 21). IN AN EARTHEN VESSEL (v, 17): Just as an earthen vessel does not admit of purification after it has been defiled, so there was no remedy for all those who went astray with the Calf, for they all perished. AND OF THE DUST (ib.): This alludes to the dust of the gold which he had ground, as you read, And ground it to powder (Ex. xxxii, 20). THAT IS ON THE FLOOR OF THE TABERNACLE (MISHKAN). . . THE PRIEST, namely Moses, SHALL TAKE; AND PUT IT INTO THE WATER (ib.): as you read, `And I cast the dust thereof into the brook that descended out of the mount' (Deut. ix, 21). AND THE PRIEST (ib.), namely Moses, SHALL SET THE WOMAN BEFORE THE LORD (ib. 18): as you read, Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said: Whoso is on the Lord's side, let him come unto me, etc. (Ex. xxxii, 26).

Midrash Rabbah goes through every jot and tittle of the sotah-water narrative, the letting down of the hair, the barely offering, the waving, the manufacture of the "holy water" (as colloidal gold) the "bitter water" . . . every single thing and shows that it's perfectly parallel with Moses and the golden-calf fiasco. Furthermore, Midrash Rabbah, against Rashi, claims that the "swollen belly" and the "fallen thigh," speaks of the curse of the offspring born of the adulterous affair. It quotes scripture showing that the "thigh" speaks of offspring in numerous places throughout scripture.

In the same sense that Midrash Rabbah parallels the sotah-water episode with the golden-calf and Moses, the golden-calf and Moses can be shown to parallel Eve's lapse in the Garden, and Adam's divorce of Eve after Cain falls from her thigh. 

In Ramban's [Nachmanides'] commentary he say: 

THE NEPHILIM. Rashi comments: "[They were called nephilim because] they fell (naphlu) and caused the downfall (hipilu) of the world." This is found in Bereshith Rabbah. 

The passage from Bereshith Rabbah just cited by Ramban is even more to our point: 

Nephilim denotes that they hurled (hippilu) the world down, themselves fell (naflu) from the world, and filled the world with abortions (nefilim) through their immorality (Bereshith, XXVI, 7).

The sotah-water causes the guilty woman to have a living abortion: Cain. That's the language implied in the sotah-water passage such that we're not surprised to see the sages giving us the reason why the sotah-water passage implies that the adulteress' child "falls" (nephil) at birth. 

The whole procedure is called "תורה," [Torah] "Law."

Rabbi Hirsch points out that the entire "bitter water" ordeal  is called "Torah" according to the Torah's own description of it. It's noted that of all the mitzvah in the Pentateuch this is the only one that requires a direct miracle from God as part and parcel of the process and it's outcome.  So what does verse 23 say: 

And the priest shall write these curses in a book, and he shall blot them out with the bitter water: And he shall cause the woman to drink the bitter water that causeth the curse: and the water that causeth the curse shall enter into her, and become bitter.

Note that the priest writes the curses in a "book" (which Rabbi Hirsch points out is the Torah) and that the "bitter water" will actually blot out the curses written in the book. By implication, the bitter water has the power to blot out the curses in the Torah. That's why it's imperative to know precisely what the bitter water represents such that it has the power to blot out the curses written in the Torah that's written by the hand of man?

What's the bitter water represent such that it has the power to blot out the curses of the written Torah if not the blood or breath of the Torah (oral Torah). The oral Torah is capable of transforming the written curses of the Torah into the blessings of the Torah. In other words, when the curses of the Torah (the written text) are dissolved into the bitter water of the Torah, the oral Torah, i.e., the breath or blood of the Torah, the curses are transformed into blessing.

This is the underlying narrative of the sotah's bitter ordeal. If she's been faithful to the spirit of the Torah, then the mixture of the written curses of the Torah, dissolved in the blessed-Torah, the water, the oral Torah, i.e., the blood, or spirit of the Torah, will give her the blessings of Torah rather than the curses writ large throughout the hand-written text.

On the other hand, if she's been unfaithful to the spirit of Torah, then the written curses dissolved in the water of the Torah will cause her to inherit the curse instead of the blessings of the Torah. . . Her dilemma, her ordeal, is our own. Her curse or blessing is the same inheritance every one of us must endure or receive with gladness. We've all sipped the cup of the curse. So what does the blessing taste like? What does the sotah text say about the blessing of the Living Torah?

In the Eucharist, which is the Christian equivalent of the Jewish sotah water ordeal, the believer takes in not only the blood, or spirit, or breath, of God, but his flesh as well. The wine consumed at the Eucharist represents the breath, or spirit, or blood, of God (nefesh), while the unleavened-bread represents his actual body, flesh, earthly frame.

In the sotah water ordeal, colloidal gold-water (holy water) represents the blood of God. The "bitter water" is read like blood; it's red from the gold-dust sprinkled in it in order to make it "holy water." Judaism makes due with colloidal gold-water as a surrogate for what the Christian Eucharist uses the wine to represent: the nefesh, or spirit, or blood, of God.

THE BREATH OF LIFE. It has five names: nefesh,neshamah, hayyah, ruah, yehidah. Nefesh is the blood: For the blood is the nefesh -- E.V. "life."

Midrash Rabbah, Deut. XII, 23.

Since Jews reject the fleshly incarnation of God as represented by Jesus' earthly frame, the closest thing they have to an incarnate, or earthly home, for the blood of God, his spirit, is the Torah scroll. Ergo, what Jesus' flesh represents for the Christian, the Torah scroll represents for the Jew.

In the Jewish Eucharist (the sotah water ordeal) the priest writes the Name of God on a scroll, which the rabbis claim is representative of the entire Torah, and place the scroll into the holy water, the colloidal gold-water, both of which are thereafter swallowed, per the Christian Eucharist, by the Jewish believer. In both versions of the faith, the believer is made into a temple where not only God's blood dwells, but his flesh too.

Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? 

1 Corinthians 3:16.

What's being implied by the fact that not just God's "breath" (blood) dwells in the temple of the Jewish and Christian believer's body, but his (God's) flesh too? -----In other words, it's one thing to imply that every believer is a temple where God's spirit resides, and quite another to suggest that not just God's spirit, but also his flesh, lives in the body of the Jewish or Christian believer?

This is a completely different thing than the general suggestion that as the temple of God, the believer is indwelt by God's spirit. 

To say that God's body, flesh, with his blood, resides in the temple, is to imply not merely that the "temple" is a typical home for God, the earthly frame where God's spirit resides, but that the temple is instead the "bride" of God, the earthly frame where God intends to give birth, to . . . well . . . Himself . . . his incarnation, his Son, his firstborn.  

Throughout Jewish midrashim, the Jerusalem temple is said to be ornamented like a bride on her wedding day. The Jerusalem temple is not just any home of God, it's God's bride; the place his flesh and blood will incarnate. -----Rashi calls the most holy place of the temple the "bedchamber" where Bride and Groom will meet to consummate the form of mating that will result in the conception of God's firstborn Son.  

. . . It's precisely the form of mating by which God will incarnate into the flesh of his Son that's the primary concern of this thread. There's reason to believe that if not explicitly, then at least implicitly, the answer to how God will incarnate into the realm of man is found in not just the Eucharist, or the sotah water episode, but every passage of scripture that uses the decoded elements of these two events as the prism through which they are themselves interpreted. 

Jewish thought is patently aware that the sotah water ordeal found in Numbers chapter 5 is archetypically related to the golden-calf fiasco in Exodus 32. Likewise, the golden calf is related to the Yom Kippur bull such that since the blood of the Yom Kippur bull is brought into the most holy place of the Jerusalem temple we're not too surprised that Moses makes the blood of the golden calf to reside in the temple that is the Jewish believer's body. 

Just as the Yom Kippur bull is slaughtered and its blood brought into the "bedchamber" (Rashi) of the Jerusalem temple, so too, Moses pulverizes the body of the golden calf, sprinkles it on water flowing down from a fountain in the Rock, so that it enters into the bodies of the children of Israel (God's bride/temple). 

Moses follows through with the symbolism of the sotah as God's temple/bride when he sacrifices the Yom Kippur calf and sees that its blood is made to reside in the temple of God's bride, the children of Israel. Not only does the sotah water episode parallel the events at Horeb, but the events at Horeb parallel the events at Yom Kippur. In both, all, cases, blood of a sacrificial bull is brought into the temple of God in order to affect the incarnation of his Son through the use of his (God's) bride. 

With so great a cloud of witnesses, who could yet be confused about precisely what will be the consummate form of mating that will consummate the relationship between God and his bride? What form of mating will lead God fearers to conceive God's Son within the temple that is their body? 

Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you. If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are. 

1 Corinthians 3:16-17.