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Numbers 5:22
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20 But if you have gone astray while under your husband’s authority, and if you have defiled yourself and some man other than your husband has lain with you”—
21 then the priest shall aput the woman under the oath of the curse, and he shall say to the woman—b“the Lord make you a curse and an oath among your people, when the Lord makes your thigh1 rot and your belly swell;  
22 and may this water that causes the curse ago into your stomach, and make your belly swell and your thigh rot.” ‘bThen the woman shall say, “Amen, so be it.”  
23 ‘Then the priest shall write these curses in a book, and he shall scrape them off into the bitter water.
24 And he shall make the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and the water that brings the curse shall enter her to become bitter.
25 aThen the priest shall take the grain offering of jealousy from the woman’s hand, shall bwave the offering before the Lord, and bring it to the altar;  
26 and the priest shall take a handful of the offering, aas its memorial portion, burn it on the altar, and afterward make the woman drink the water.  
27 When he has made her drink the water, then it shall be, if she has defiled herself and behaved unfaithfully toward her husband, that the water that brings a acurse will enter her and become bitter, and her belly will swell, her thigh will rot, and the woman bwill become a curse among her people.  
28 But if the woman has not defiled herself, and is clean, then she shall be free and may conceive children.
29 ‘This is the law of jealousy, when a wife, while under her husband’s authority, agoes astray and defiles herself,  
Commentaries:
Adam Clarke
<< Numbers 5:21   Numbers 5:23 >>


Numbers 5:22

Thy belly to swell, and thy thigh to rot - What is meant by these expressions cannot be easily ascertained. lanpel yarech signifies literally thy thigh to fall. As the thigh, feet, etc., were used among the Hebrews delicately to express the parts which nature conceals, (see Genesis 46:26), the expression here is probably to be understood in this sense; and the falling down of the thigh here must mean something similar to the prolapsus uteri , or falling down of the womb, which might be a natural effect of the preternatural distension of the abdomen. In I Corinthians 11:29, St. Paul seems to allude to the case of the guilty woman drinking the bitter cursed waters that caused her destruction: He who eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation ( , condemnation or judgment) to himself; and there is probably a reference to the same thing in Psalms 109:18, and in Daniel 9:11.

And the woman shall say, Amen, amen - This is the first place where this word occurs in the common form of a concluding wish in prayer. The root aman signifies to be steady, true, permanent. And in prayer it signifies let it be so - make it steady - let it be ratified. Some have supposed that it is composed of the initial letters of Adonai Melech Neeman , My Lord the faithful King, but this derivation is both far-fetched and unnecessary.




Other Adam Clarke entries containing Numbers 5:22:

Numbers 5:31
John 21:25

 

<< Numbers 5:21   Numbers 5:23 >>

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