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The fourth perek gets a little in the weeds, as it does the legal-academic work of applying the previously developed Sotah laws to a variety of potential (theoretical?) cases. Here's an effort at presenting the basic categories that the Mishna develops:
(1) Cases in which a wife's violation of her husband's "seclusion" warning will NOT trigger the Sotah ordeal, but WILL effectively end the marriage (without ketubah) because the wife's actions have rendered cohabitation between them forbidden. Examples in our perek include couples that are still in a pre-marriage state, and couples that are in a marriage that by law really should never have been entered into to begin with. (Mishnayot One and Two)
(2) Cases which share the same bottom line as the ones above, except that in these cases the wife DOES receive her ketubah. These are cases in which it is the husband's actions subsequent to the forbidden seclusion that pre-empt the Sotah ordeal from going through (Mishna 2)
(3) Mishna 3 contains a very interesting debate as to how to categorize a situation in which a couple, in deciding to marry, violated a rabbinic dictum against a man marrying a divorcee or widow who is pregnant with her previous husband's child, or is still nursing their baby (and after they marry a "forbidden seclusion" occurs.). While R. Meir sees this case as belonging in category (1), the Sages (who see this marriage as potentially viable one ultimately) rule that this case should be treated as a classical case in which the Sotah ordeal IS applied.
Mishna five raises an idea that we've not seen before at all, namely the possibility that a Bet Din will act in the place of an absent husband in warning a married woman to not seclude with a particular man. The implicit idea that ensuring the faithfulness of married women is the responsibility of and within the purview of the Court acting in the Public Good is a very interesting one.
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