DEUT1208 While the biblical text never defines the word mamzer, Jewish law understands it as referring to a child of an adulterous or incestuous union (see the ruling of Rabbi Joshua in Mishnah Yevamot 4:13, and Shulchan Arukh, Even Ha-Ezer 4:13). Such a child (mamzer is generally translated as "bastard") [I use the word "bastard" hesitantly, since in common American usage, it often refers to a child born to an unmarried woman (with the relaxation of sexual standards in recent decades, the term is now used infrequently, except as a curse). Under Jewish law, no legal stigma or disabilities attach to a child born to an unmarried woman.] along with his or her descendants are forbidden all time to marry other Israelites except for those who are either mamzerim or converts [such a marriage would be very disadvantageous for a convert since, as noted, any children resulting from this union would continue to bear the stigma of mamzerut (Kiddishin 67a)]. While this law does not of course literally violate the provision in Deuteronomy that prohibits executing children for the crimes of their parents, a prohibition that cuts someone off from almost all possibilities of marriage is very severe. It has sometimes been explained that the rationale for this law is that people who are about to sin sexually are often overtaken with lust. Understanding how difficult it might be for people in such a circumstance to observe the Seventh Commandment's prohibition of adultery, the Torah decreed the law of mamzerut, in effect warning the couple: "If you want one another so badly, that's your sin, but know that any child you conceive will be cursed to the day of its death." This, the Torah hoped, would give would-be adulterers the strength to resist temptation, in the same way, for example, that any couple would resist having relations if they knew that the child that would result from their love-making would be born deformed (see Maimonides, The Guide for The Perplexed 3:49). Because the Rabbis felt that the child of an adulterous union was an innocent victim of the parents' sin, they became very creative in devising legal fictions to free a child from the taint of mamzerut, even when it seemed very apparent that the child had resulted from an act of adultery [e.g., Yevamot 80b, Shulchan Arukh, Even Ha-Ezer 4:14].