Soncino English Talmud
Nedarim
Daf 91b
A certain woman shewed displeasure with her husband. Said he to her, 'Why this change now?' She replied, 'You have never caused me so much pain through intimacy as to-day.' 'But there has been none to-day!' he exclaimed. 'If so,' she returned, [it must have been] 'the gentile naphtha sellers who were here to-day; if not you, perhaps it was one of them.' Said R. Nahman: Disregard her; she had conceived a passion for another. A certain man was closeted in a house with a [married] woman. Hearing the master [her husband] entering, the adulterer broke through a hedge and fled. Said Raba: The wife is permitted; had he committed wrong, he would have hidden himself [in the house]. A certain adulterer visited a woman. Her husband came, whereupon the lover went and placed himself behind a curtain before the door. Now, some cress was lying there, and a snake [came and ate] thereof; the master [her husband] was about to eat of the cress, unknown to his wife. 'Do not eat it,' warned the lover, 'because a snake has tasted it.' Said Raba: The wife is permitted: had he committed wrong, he would have been pleased that he should eat thereof and die, as it is written, For they have committed adultery, and blood is in their hands. Surely that is obvious? — I might think that he had committed wrong, and as for his warning, that is because he prefers the husband not to die, so that his wife may be to him as stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant; therefore he teaches otherwise.
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