Study Sotah folio 8B with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
Text Excerpt
דרבנן אדרבנן נמי לא קשיא. הכא טעמא מאי? משום ״ונוסרו כל הנשים״. התם — אין לך ייסור גדול מזה.
The contradiction between one ruling of the Rabbis and the other ruling of the Rabbis is not difficult as well. Here, with regard to a sota, what is the reason that her hair and body are uncovered? Because of what is stated in the verse, that other women should be warned: “Thus will I cause lewdness to cease out of the land, that all women may be chastened not to do after your lewdness” (Ezekiel 23:48). There, with regard to stoning, you have no greater chastening than seeing this stoning itself.
וכי תימא לעביד בה תרתי — אמר רב נחמן אמר רבה בר אבוה, אמר קרא: ״ואהבת לרעך כמוך״ — ברור לו מיתה יפה.
And if you would say that two forms of chastening, both stoning and humiliation, should be done with her, Rav Naḥman said that Rabba bar Avuh said: The verse states: “You should love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18), teaching that even with regard to a condemned prisoner, select a good, i.e., a compassionate, death for him. Therefore, when putting a woman to death by stoning, she should not be humiliated in the process.
The Talmud suggests: Let us say that the statement of Rav Naḥman is a dispute between tanna’im, and according to R' Yehuda there is no mitzva to select a compassionate death. The Talmud refutes this: No, it may be that everyone agrees with the opinion of Rav Naḥman, and here they disagree about this: One Sage, i.e., the Rabbis, holds: Minimizing one’s degradation is preferable to him than minimizing his physical pain. Therefore, the Rabbis view the more compassionate death as one without degradation, even if wearing clothes will increase the pain of the one being executed, as the clothes will absorb the blow and prolong death. And one Sage, R' Yehuda, holds that minimizing physical pain is preferable to a person than minimizing his degradation, and therefore the one being executed prefers to be stoned unclothed, without any chance of the clothing prolonging the death, although this adds to the degradation.