This is a long parasha with many topics.
The Rabbis give us reasons for why certain topics appear next to each other.
For example, the story of the sotah (unfaithful wife) - and the nazir (who abstains from wine) are adjacent to teach us a lesson. If you see someone who got into trouble, it may be because she drank too much wine. Therefore, we learn to stay away from what can get us into trouble.
These connections are called Semichut.
There is a lesser known semichut that explains why the part about what a man is supposed to give charity is placed next to the part about the man whose wife strays.
In those days most charity went to the Cohen.
Rashi says the following
אִם אַתָּה מְעַכֵּב מַתְּנוֹת הַכֹּהֵן, חַיֶּיךָ שֶׁתִּצְטָרֵךְ לָבֹא אֶצְלוֹ לְהָבִיא לוֹ אֶת הַסּוֹטָה:
If you hold back and don’t give to Cohen, you’ll have to come anyway to Cohen with your wife for the trial of the Sotah
In other words,You didn’t want to meet up with Cohen to give him his gifts and tithes, so now you’ll meet him in another, (less pleasant) way, says Rashi.
Of course, we must point out, the wife here isn’t being punished solely on her husband’s account. She did wrong too. Hashem takes everything into account. And most likely it was merely a suspicion and she will be cleared, and have a baby, but why go through all this?
There are so many factors and calculations, Rashi says. But it’s a global approach. We don’t see the connections right away.
The end goal was to get the man to the Cohen. He was going to get there one way or another. Why do things the hard way?
This reminds me of something that happened a few years ago. Rabbi Ozeri was raising money for something and while most people give generously and happily, one particular man that the rabbi was trying to reach kept avoiding him. A few weeks later, I saw the man in the lobby of the shul. It turned out that he was going through a family issue and came because he needed to see the rabbi.
The concept here is that if Hashem wants to get you to a certain spot, you can go willingly or unwillingly. Hashem works things out.
The easy way is to do things right.
The right way, for example, is to go to shul to pray with a minyan. The hard way is when people are suddenly in shul because they had a bad dream or are having some big medical test. Everything ends up working out but why have these scares? Just go.
We are familiar with the Yom Kippur Maftir Yonah, which we read for various reasons. One is because it talks about Hashem’s mercy on the people of Nineveh. Another reason is because it’s about Teshuva. Yonah wanted the people to do Teshuva.
There’s also a lesser known reason that the Mishna Berurah gives: It says the lesson isn’t about people of Nineveh- it’s about Yonah.
It’s to teach us that you can’t run away from G-d. ‘אינו יכול לברוח מן ה
Yonah tried to evade giving the prophecy. He tried to run away from. G-d He jumped on a boat, then jumped overboard and then got swallowed by a fish but in the end he did it anyway.
The Mishna Berurah in Shaar HaZion says that we were put here to fix things. Why go through the hassle- we should just do it nicely- We going to have to do it anyway.
G-d gets His way no matter what, so why wait the drama? If you have to make up with someone, just do it. We often hear stories of people who have to look back to see who they insulted. Just do it now.
You’re going to get to the Cohen. Just go now.