Lexicon

H3409 - yarek

Strong's: H3409 · BLB lookup Pronunciation: yaw-rake' Part of speech: feminine noun LXX equivalent: μηρός (mēros), "thigh"

Semantic range (Brown-Driver-Briggs)

Thigh, hip, the upper leg as a body part: Ehud straps his sword "upon his right thigh" (Judges 3:16); Jacob's hip is struck at the Jabbok (Genesis 32:25, 32).
Loins, the generative region, by euphemism: descendants "came out of his loins," literally "out of his thigh" (Genesis 46:26; Exodus 1:5; Judges 8:30).
The place of oath-taking: the hand placed "under the thigh" to swear (Genesis 24:2, 9; 47:29), an oath sworn on the source of a man's offspring.
Side, base of an object, by extension: the shaft or base of the tabernacle lampstand (Exodus 25:31) and the side of the altar (Leviticus 1:11).

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Theological force

Yārēk matters apologetically because of one passage. In the sotah ordeal of Numbers 5:11-31, the curse on a guilty wife is that her yārēk "falls" (nōpelet, from nāpal, "to fall") and her beṭen (belly) swells (vv. 21, 22, 27). Some modern translations render the phrase as a miscarriage, and the claim that "God commanded abortion" rests on that rendering.

The word's range explains why most formal translations keep "thigh" and why the curse reads most naturally as a fertility curse:

The thigh stands for the generative organs in the oath scenes and the "came out of his thigh" idiom. A falling thigh is an image of reproductive failure.
The passage's contrast term is conception: the innocent woman "shall be free, and shall conceive seed" (Numbers 5:28, ASV).
Yārēk is the woman's own body, not a child. The thing that falls is her thigh; no fetus is the subject of the verb.

The word is never used for the womb itself (that is reḥem) or for a miscarried child (that is nēpel, as in Job 3:16). See Numbers 5 Commands Abortion Objection Defeater for the full case.

Notable verses

Genesis 24:2, 9, Abraham's servant swears with his hand "under the thigh"
Genesis 32:25, 32, Jacob's hip socket touched at the Jabbok; the origin of Israel's custom about the sinew of the hip
Genesis 46:26, "all the souls that came with Jacob into Egypt, that came out of his loins" (ASV), Hebrew "out of his thigh"
Exodus 1:5, the same idiom for Jacob's descendants
Numbers 5:21, 22, 27, the "falling thigh" of the sotah curse
Judges 3:16, 21, Ehud's sword on his right thigh
Psalm 45:3, the king girds his sword on his thigh