No'ef ishah chaser lev, maschis nafsho hu ya'asena
- from Alshich on Mishley - translated by R. Munk
Anyone who commits adultery with a woman lacks understanding; he who wants to destroy himself does such a thing.
The adulterer is completely heartless, has no offsetting good traits. When we contrast him with the ordinary thief, the adulterer has never had a need for the object of his lust, on the contrary, fulfilling his lust instead of satiating his unger, corrupts his personality. Instead of using his soul to make amends for the sins of his body, he actively corrupts his soul, the area which his remorse ought to origintate from.
The purpose of the curses was to curse things that were normally hidden and innocuous...(for instance, the forbidden relationship between a mother in law and son in law, no one would condemn a son in law for hanging around with his mother in law). There are some sins, like hitting a person, that everyone sees and immediately recognizes as wrong, and do not go unnoticed. But there are some sins that do go unnoticed generally, and it was important that as soon as the Jews crossed into Israel that they would make a statement that they stood against sins that are generally unnoticed.
Another purpose of declaring curses was to make a point regarding bullies. Sometimes bullies are able to push others into not condemning them for sinning. These eleven curses were a curse that cursed all such bullies for all times.