Musar su Esodo 15:25

In other words: דינים and משפטים, contribute to the respective perfection of the נשמה-גוף-ממון elements in our lives. משפטים are the mainstay of it all. Our sages say (Shemot Rabbah 30,3) that Torah (i.e. the Ten Commandments) is surrounded by דינים. The Torah begins with דינים, as we read in Exodus 15,25: שם שם לו חוק ומשפט, and it ends with דינים in Exodus chapter 21,1, (The letter ו in the words ואלההמשפטים, is regarded as a continuation of the Ten Commandments). You should know that there are two categories of דין. One category reflects only the attribute of Justice. The other category is a combination of the attribute of Justice and the attribute of Mercy. Our Rabbis have already said that originally G–d had planned to create a universe based on justice. However, G–d saw that such a universe would not endure, hence He co-opted the attribute of Mercy (Bereshit Rabbah 12,15). Just as the attribute of Mercy was invoked when creating man, so Torah itself reflects on occasion strict justice, and on other occasions justice tempered with mercy. As an example, consider the four possible ways of administering the death penalty to people guilty thereof, as opposed to the owner of an ox that has fatally gored a free human being repeatedly, so that the owner's negligence was the cause of what is described by the Torah as deserving the death penalty (Exodus 21,29), וגם בעליו יומת. Rashi explains that this death penalty is administered by Heaven, not by a human tribunal, i.e. the attribute of Mercy is invoked. A similar instance is the statement in the Torah: "An eye for an eye" (Exodus 21,24). This is understood by the Rabbis as referring to financial compensation to be paid to the person who has lost his eye (Baba Kama 84). The reason the Torah employs such severe sounding language, i.e. עין תחת עין, is to tell us that spoiling someone's eye deserves to be paid for by loss of one's own eye. Only because the attribute of Mercy has been co-opted, is restitution made in money, i.e. in terms of the monetary value of the eye one has destroyed.

A person has to conduct himself at all times in such a way that he does not arouse the suspicion of transgressing laws either vis-a-vis G–d or vis-a-vis his fellow man. The example of the Sotah teaches this lesson, since she had to undergo public embarrassment in order to prove her innocence. The Zohar there says that the whole of Israel was treated in a like manner by Moses at Marah. When the Israelites came out of Egypt and they came to Marah and found the water unfit to drink they were given the kind of מים המאררים that one gives to a woman suspected of unproven marital infidelity. All the Egyptians had been saying that the children of the Israelites who left Egypt were in reality the offspring of Egyptians who had slept with Jewish women. As a result of such accusations a number of Jewish husbands suspected their wives of infidelities committed in Egypt. Also Jewish wives suspected their husbands of infidelities committed with Egyptian women. This is why G–d told Moses to examine the truth of these accusations by means of these waters, to eliminate unfounded suspicions. After that episode G–d gave them חוק ומשפט ושם נסהו, "there He gave them statutes and social laws, and there He examined them" (Exodus 15,25). The Torah attests to this by calling the tribes “שבטי י-ה עדות לישראל” that all these accusations had been unfounded. An allusion to this can be found in our verses in the peculiar description of the tribes as הראובני, השמעוני, etc, instead of ראובן, שמעון, etc. The extra letters ה and י, spell the two lettered name of G–d, י-ה, and indicate that all the tribes were pure, no one had committed any infidelity, otherwise the Torah would not bestow this compliment on them. When the Priest examines the Sotah in our paragraph, the purpose is similar to that of Moses at the time.