“And if the woman was not defiled, and she is pure, she will be absolved and will conceive offspring” (Numbers 5:28). “And if the woman was not defiled” – in the past; “and she is pure” – in the future102If she is unfaithful to her husband in the future, she will receive the punishment as a consequence of the waters of bitterness which she drank.; at that moment she is absolved from the curses and the oath.
“And will conceive offspring” – Rabbi Eliezer says: The suffering is sufficient for her to be given children as her reward; if she was barren, she will conceive. Rabbi Yehoshua says: If so, all the barren women will go and be corrupted,103They will engineer a situation where their husbands will warn them and then they would enter into seclusion with the one regarding whom they had been warned. and the one who sits idle loses.
Why does the verse state: “She will be absolved and will conceive offspring”? So that if she would give birth in pain, from then on she will give birth with ease; if females, she will give birth to males; if black, she will give birth to white children; if short, she will give birth to tall; if she would give birth every two years, she will give birth each year; if she would give birth to one, she will give birth to two.
Rabbi Shimon says: One does not give reward for transgression. Rather, because she had been prohibited to conceive in the past,104This is because she was forbidden to her husband from the time of her seclusion until she drank the bitter water. is the same, perhaps, true in the future? The verse states: “She will be absolved and will conceive offspring”; from now on it is permitted for her to conceive offspring.