Numbers 5:21

Then the priest shall charge the woman with an oath of cursing, and the priest shall say unto the woman, The LORD make thee a curse and an oath among thy people, when the LORD doth make thy thigh to rot, and thy belly to swell;

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

5:11-31 This law would make the women of Israel watch against giving cause for suspicion. On the other hand, it would hinder the cruel treatment such suspicions might occasion. It would also hinder the guilty from escaping, and the innocent from coming under just suspicion. When no proof could be brought, the wife was called on to make this solemn appeal to a heart-searching God. No woman, if she were guilty, could say Amen to the adjuration, and drink the water after it, unless she disbelieved the truth of God, or defied his justice. The water is called the bitter water, because it caused the curse. Thus sin is called an evil and a bitter thing. Let all that meddle with forbidden pleasures, know that they will be bitterness in the latter end. From the whole learn, 1. Secret sins are known to God, and sometimes are strangely brought to light in this life; and that there is a day coming when God will, by Christ, judge the secrets of men according to the gospel, Ro 2:16. 2 In particular, Whoremongers and adulterers God will surely judge. Though we have not now the waters of jealousy, yet we have God's word, which ought to be as great a terror. Sensual lusts will end in bitterness. 3. God will manifest the innocency of the innocent. The same providence is for good to some, and for hurt to others. And it will answer the purposes which God intends.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Gone aside ... - literally, "gone astray from" thy husband by uncleanness; compare Hosea 4:12.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

21. The Lord make thee a curse, &c.—a usual form of imprecation (Isa 65:15; Jer 29:22).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

An oath, i.e. a form of cursing or imprecatory oaths, that when they would curse a person, they may wish that they may be as cursed and miserable as thou wast upon this occasion. See the phrase Isaiah 65:15 Jeremiah 29:22 and compare Genesis 48:20 Ruth 4:11,12.

Thy thigh; a modest signification of the genital parts, used both in Scripture, as Genesis 46:26 Exodus 1:5, and other authors, that the sin might be evident in the punishment.

To rot, Heb. to fall, i.e. to die or waste away, as the word is used, 1 Chronicles 21:14, compared with 2 Samuel 24:15.

To swell, suddenly and violently till it burst, which the Jews note was frequent in this and like cases, as Exodus 32:20. And it was a clear evidence of the truth of their religion.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Then the priest shall charge the woman with an oath of cursing,.... An oath which has a curse annexed to it, if taken falsely, which was to be pronounced upon the woman if guilty:

and the priest shall say unto the woman; pronouncing the imprecation or curse upon her, she having taken the oath, should she be guilty of the crime suspected of, and she had swore concerning:

the Lord make thee a curse, and an oath among the people; accursed according to the oath taken; or let this be the form of an oath and imprecation used by the people, saying, if I have done so and so, let me be accursed as such a woman, or let not that happen to me, as did to such a woman, so Jarchi:

when the Lord doth make thy thigh to rot, and thy belly to swell; upon drinking the bitter waters; but though these things followed upon that, yet not as the natural cause of them, for they are ascribed to the Lord, and to a supernatural and miraculous power of his, which went along with the drinking of them.

Geneva Study Bible

Then the priest shall charge the woman with an oath of cursing, and the priest shall say unto the woman, The LORD make thee a {k} curse and an oath among thy people, when the LORD doth make thy thigh to rot, and thy belly to swell;

(k) Both because she had committed so heinous a fault, and forswore herself in denying the same.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 21. - Then the priest shall say unto the woman. These words are parenthetical, just as in Matthew 9:6. The latter part of the oath is called "an oath of cursing," because it contained the imprecations on the guilty. To rot. Hebrew, "to fall." Τὸν μηρόν σου διαπεπτωκότα,, Septuagint. To swell. The Hebrew zabeh is not of quite certain meaning, but probably this. Numbers 5:21

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The oath which the priest required her to take is called, in Numbers 5:21, האלה שׁבעת, "oath of cursing" (see Genesis 26:28); but it first of all presupposes the possibility of the woman being innocent, and contains the assurance, that in that case the curse-water would do her no harm. "If no (other) man has lain with thee, and thou hast not gone aside to union (טמאה, accus. of more precise definition, as in Leviticus 15:2, Leviticus 15:18), under thy husband," i.e., as a wife subject to thy husband (Ezekiel 23:5; Hosea 4:12), "then remain free from the water of bitterness, this curse-bringing," i.e., from the effects of this curse-water. The imperative is a sign of certain assurance (see Genesis 12:2; Genesis 20:7; cf. Ges. 130, 1). "But if thou hast gone aside under thy husband, if thou hast defiled thyself, and a man has given thee his seed beside thy husband,"...(the priest shall proceed to say; this is the meaning of the repetition of לאשּׁה...והשׁבּיע, Numbers 5:21), "Jehovah shall make thee a curse and an oath among thy people, by making thy hip to fall and thy belly to swell; and this curse-bringing water shall come into thy bowels, to make the belly to vanish and the hip to fall." To this oath that was spoken before her the woman was to reply, "true, true," or "truly, truly," and thus confirm it as taken by herself (cf. Deuteronomy 27:15.; Nehemiah 5:13). It cannot be determined with any certainty what was the nature of the disease threatened in this curse. Michaelis supposes it to be dropsy of the ovary (hydrops ovarii), in which a tumour is formed in the place of the ovarium, which may even swell so as to contain 100 lbs. of fluid, and with which the patient becomes dreadfully emaciated. Josephus says it is ordinary dropsy (hydrops ascites: Ant. iii. 11, 6). At any rate, the idea of the curse is this: Δι ̓ ὧν γὰρ ἡ ἁμαρτία, διὰ τούτων ἡ τιμωρία ("the punishment shall come from the same source as the sin," Theodoret). The punishment was to answer exactly to the crime, and to fall upon those bodily organs which had been the instruments of the woman's sin, viz., the organs of child-bearing.