For the source text click/tap here: Sotah 24
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Our mishnah deals with situations in which the woman, suspected of committing adultery, does not have the opportunity to drink the bitter waters, but rather she must be divorced and does not receive her ketubah.
The Torah uses the word “wife” (alternatively translated as woman) in summarizing the laws of the Sotah. From here the rabbis deduce that she must have the status of full wife in order to drink the bitter waters. A betrothed woman does not have such a status and hence, even if her fiancé forbids her from being secluded with a certain man and afterwards, she is secluded with him, she does not undergo the sotah ordeal. Similarly, a “shomeret yavam”, a woman whose husband died childless and is waiting for either levirate marriage (yibbum) or the release from levirate marriage (halitzah), does not drink the bitter waters.
We explore further the notion of the jealous husband.