Or HaChaim on Deuteronomy 23:22/אור החיים על דברים כ״ג:כ״ב

1 והיה בך חטא. "and you will be guilty of a sin." We can understand this in accordance with the Talmudic statement in Shabbat 32 that failure to honour one's vows may result in the death of one's wife or children while they are still minors." The word חטא means that something is lacking, missing [such as to miss a target להחטיא. Ed.]. Looked at from this perspective, failure to pay one's vows results in one's being deprived of something else which is his, such as the wife whom our sages describe as אשתו כגופו, "a person's wife is like his own body." One has a tendency to look upon one's minor children as one's property. The appropriate punishment for people who do not honour their vows to G'd then is to remind them by depriving them of something else they hold dear.