Someone made this image with the argument that the Bible doesn’t care about the sanctity of life to suggest that it’s okay for humans to take the life of the unborn. These kinds of arguments are based on misreadings of scripture taken out of context.
Gen 2:7 says (NLT), “Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person.”
Gen 2:7 is about Adam and how he was formed from dust, so he wasn’t born. This was about God’s Spirit giving life for the first time. No human was born or convinced before then. The special breath, or Spirit of God, is what gives humans intelligence, ingenuity, and language skills that animals don’t possess; it makes us like God, “in his image” (Gen 1:26-27). God didn’t breathe directly into any animals, only Adam (the man). That is the significance of this verse. For unborn babies, without the oxygen being supplied by the umbilical cord, they would die, so this passage isn’t about the literal air we breathe through our nostrils initiating life. In short, Adam was not formed in a womb, so this doesn’t apply.
Exodus 21:22 “Now suppose two men are fighting, and in the process they accidentally strike a pregnant woman so she gives birth prematurely.[c] If no further injury results, the man who struck the woman must pay the amount of compensation the woman’s husband demands and the judges approve. 23 But if there is further injury, the punishment must match the injury: a life for a life, 24 an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot, 25 a burn for a burn, a wound for a wound, a bruise for a bruise.
Ex 21:22 says if two men are fighting, and in the process, they accidentally strike a pregnant woman, who gives birth prematurely, and there is no further injury. Then the family is compensated for the injury. However, the following verses continue saying that if there is a further injury that leads to death, then the compensation must be “a life for a life, eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth”. Exodus 21:22-25 includes “life for life,” so if the baby dies, it is the death penalty for the assailant. If the baby is born prematurely but lives, then the person must pay restitution.
The Hebrew text says, yatsu yeladeha (וְיָצְא֣וּ יְלָדֶ֔יהָ), “her fruit came out”(KJV). Yeled (יֶלֶד), the root of yeladeha, means child. Her “child” came out, which means birth. Shakal (שָׁכֹל), which means “bereaved” (loss of a loved one), usually translates as miscarriage. On Bible hub, only 5 out of over 20 translations of Ex 21:22 say miscarriage instead of premature birth. Check it out here.
Numerous sections in the Torah outline particular scenarios. It’s because these scenarios were gray areas when considering the fundamental laws, such as ‘don’t murder’ and ‘don’t steal,’ etc. These types of clauses are likely in response to an actual scenario that was brought before Moses that the basic rules didn’t cover. So he consulted with God, and this was the resolution they came to.
This scenario is not about the pregnant woman dying but rather about the death of the unborn child. Murdering a woman is already covered in the command “thou shalt not murder” (Ex 20:13, Deut 5:17), so this section is not about her murder. Since this is about accidental harm done to pregnant women when two men are fighting, it seems like a slaying rather than a murder. To understand why this was written, we must ask, what would happen if the woman were not pregnant? If a non-pregnant woman gets injured, there is compensation, and this is based not only on what is said here in Ex 21:22 but also on the previous verse before it starts at verse 18.
Exodus 21:18 “Now suppose two men quarrel, and one hits the other with a stone or fist, and the injured person does not die but is confined to bed. 19 If he is later able to walk outside again, even with a crutch, the assailant will not be punished but must compensate his victim for lost wages and provide for his full recovery.
Exodus 21:18-21 is all about compensation for accidental injuries for both free people and slaves. If she dies from an unintentional injury, then the slayer will flee to a city of refuge and wait for a trial to prove there was no intent. If found innocent, he has to stay in the city of refuge until the high priest dies; otherwise, the woman’s family has the right to kill him in revenge if he leaves the city. If found guilty of intent, he is put to death because it was murder. This refuge system for accidental slayers is based on what is written in Numbers 35, Deuteronomy 4:41-43, and Deuteronomy 19.
Another aspect of this is that the slayer is in a fight, which complicates the question of intent. If a person accidentally dropped a brick, it hit a pregnant woman, and there is a death, then he flees to a city of refuge and proves his innocence. However, this scenario is caused by a fight between two men, and fights are intentional. Even if the pregnant woman is injured by accident, the fight itself is a deliberate act of violence as a result of a conflict. So it would disqualify that person for refugee status according to Num 35:21.
Fighting is a choice, and injuries obtained in a fight were not the result of random accidents or natural disasters, but from humans being intentionally violent. So, instead of going to a city of refuge, this scenario can be seen as the negligent homicide of either the woman, the child, or both. The scenario and solution presented in Ex 21:22-25 is the answer to the question, “What happens if a person injures a pregnant woman in a case of irresponsible, intentional, reckless violence between two people, and there is a death”? So it seems like the “life-for-a-life” framework supersedes the city of refuge system when it wasn’t an actual accident, and therefore it counts as murder.
Numbers 5:21 “At this point the priest must put the woman under oath by saying, ‘May the people know that the Lord’s curse is upon you when he makes you infertile, causing your womb to shrivel and your abdomen to swell. 22 Now may this water that brings the curse enter your body and cause your abdomen to swell and your womb to shrivel.’ And the woman will be required to say, ‘Yes, let it be so.’ 23 And the priest will write these curses on a piece of leather and wash them off into the bitter water. 24 He will make the woman drink the bitter water that brings on the curse. When the water enters her body, it will cause bitter suffering if she is guilty.
25 “The priest will take the jealousy offering from the woman’s hand, lift it up before the Lord, and carry it to the altar. 26 He will take a handful of the flour as a token portion and burn it on the altar, and he will require the woman to drink the water. 27 If she has defiled herself by being unfaithful to her husband, the water that brings on the curse will cause bitter suffering. Her abdomen will swell and her womb will shrink, and her name will become a curse among her people. 28 But if she has not defiled herself and is pure, then she will be unharmed and will still be able to have children.
The Numbers 5:11-31 adultery test is done in response to suspicion of illicit sex by a cheating wife, not specifically suspicion of a bastard child being in the womb. There are two different views on Numbers 5:27, the disfigurement view and the miscarriage view. The disfigurement position takes the description of the woman experiencing a vaginal prolapse, and the miscarriage position sees this as an idiomatic expression of miscarriage. The vaginal prolapse view has more support because of verse 28. Verse 28 says that if the woman is innocent, “she will still be able to have children.” This shows that the punishment is designed to make a woman barren. Not all acts of adultery cause pregnancy, so the punishment needs to be universal. Even if the miscarriage view is correct when there is a pregnancy, God has the right to allow the death of children like David’s illegitimate son with Bathsheba (2 Samuel 12:14). There are examples in the Old Testament where the sins of one of the parents led directly to the death of their children like with Achan’s family in Joshua 7:25 for violating the rule on taking the detestable things that Canaanites had in Deut 7:26. According to that rule from Deut 7:26, the person who breaks that law will be destroyed like them [the Canaanites]. Achan inherited the judgment of the Canaanites themselves, which included the end of families (Deut 20:10-18). There is also Dathan and Abiram, who were punished along with their families for joining Korah’s rebellion against Moses (Num 16:23-35).
All of these punishments happened outside of the womb. The distinction is that these were done as punishment for sin by God himself; humans can’t judge people at that level. Humans can only put to death someone guilty of breaking a law worthy of death, like murdering an innocent person. They must be seen committing the crime by two or three witnesses (Deut 17:6-7). Humans were never allowed to punish the parent for the child’s sin or vice versa (Deut 24:16). When Joseph found out Mary (mother of Jesus) was pregnant, he opted not to go through with the jealousy ritual but just divorce her quietly (Matthew 1:18-19). If a woman gets pregnant and her husband knows it is not his because he didn’t have sex with her recently, it would be pretty obvious the baby is not his, and she wouldn’t be able to lie about this. Therefore, this ritual really would have never been done if she were knowingly pregnant with another man’s baby, since there is no question in his mind that it is not his. In the case of Joseph, an angel vindicated Mary in his dream (Matt 1:20).
Deut 28:18-24 is part of the outline of God’s curse for breaking his commands in Deut 28:16-64, and this has nothing to do with abortion or the sanctity of life. The first thing to note in this chapter is a hyperbolic tone, meaning not every line is a literal prophetic declaration or an absolute promise. For instance, Deut 28:7 says Israel’s enemies “will scatter from them in seven directions.” Verse 25 has the opposite (the curse), saying that Israel will flee from their enemies in seven directions. It doesn’t mean every battle ends with the loser fleeing in seven specific directions.
More examples: Lev 26:7-8, when God promises victory in battles, he says, “5 of you will chase 100, and 100 of you will chase 10,000!” This does not mean that five people will always chase 100, or 100 will chase 10,000. Jesus says, “There will always be temptations to sin, but what sorrow awaits the person who does the tempting! It would be better to be thrown into the sea with a millstone hung around your neck than to cause one of these little ones to fall into sin” in Matt 18:6-7 and Luke 17:1-3. He doesn’t actually want people to be thrown into the sea with a millstone around their neck. He is expressing the severity of the sin of temptation. The last example is when Peter asks Jesus how often we must forgive others, and Jesus says 70 times 7 (Matt 18:21-35). That doesn’t mean you can count to 490 and then stop forgiving. In fact, Jesus said in Matthew 6:15 and Mark 11:25-26 that if we don’t forgive others, God won’t forgive us, which is what He said in the concluding verse of Matthew 18:35. Deuteronomy 28 is filled with hyperbole, which means it’s exaggerated to emphasize that the curse is evil. They should avoid breaking the commands and reaching that point.
Deuteronomy 28:15 “But if you refuse to listen to the Lord your God and do not obey all the commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come and overwhelm you:
16 Your towns and your fields will be cursed. 17 Your fruit baskets and breadboards will be cursed. 18 Your children and your crops will be cursed. The offspring of your herds and flocks will be cursed. 19 Wherever you go and whatever you do, you will be cursed.
20 “The Lord himself will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in everything you do, until at last you are completely destroyed for doing evil and abandoning me. 21 The Lord will afflict you with diseases until none of you are left in the land you are about to enter and occupy. 22 The Lord will strike you with wasting diseases, fever, and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, and with blight and mildew. These disasters will pursue you until you die. 23 The skies above will be as unyielding as bronze, and the earth beneath will be as hard as iron. 24 The Lord will change the rain that falls on your land into powder, and dust will pour down from the sky until you are destroyed.
War appears in the blessing and curse; the difference was that they would lose battles under the curse and win them under the blessing. God doesn’t cause the wars humans wage, but how He responds depends on whether His people are keeping their side of the covenant. Conquest, sickness, and poverty can happen without death, so not everyone would die. The curse would be reversed if the Israelites repented (2 Chron. 7:14). In Judges chapter 2, the narrator reveals the pattern that will be repeated throughout the book, stating that Israel was stuck in a cycle of sinning, being conquered, repenting, and being delivered, repeating the process continuously. According to Ezekiel 18:23-32, God doesn’t enjoy punishing the wicked but has to for the sake of justice for their victims; however, God will show mercy to those who repent. The fullest extent of this curse was the Assyrian conquest and Babylonian exile of the Israelites. The righteous who repented were spared, as we can see in Ezekiel 9, when God promised to mark the righteous to protect them from death.
Sin is the reason we all die (Romans 5:12, Romans 6:23) because God is just and must get justice for all the wicked deeds humans do, and death is part of that punishment. In Genesis 6, the earth is so violent and bad that God had to flood it. The death penalty was not a punishment until after the flood. The death penalty was introduced in Genesis 9:5-6, and it was for murder. Cain, the firstborn son of Adam and Eve (the first humans), committed the very first murder. He murdered his brother Abel in Genesis 4:8. In Genesis 4:9-15, God punishes Cain with hardship in growing crops, and Cain complains his punishment is too much and he is afraid someone else will kill him. So God shows him mercy by branding him with a mark that would function as a symbol of protection in Gen 4:15. Many years later, in Genesis 4:23-24, Lamech, one of Cain’s sixth-generation descendants, brags about murdering a man and believes that Cain’s mark will be on him too and protect him. I believe that this warping of God’s mercy on Cain created a “Murder Olympics”, where people interpreted the mark of Cain as a reward of special protection. This is likely one of the reasons Gen 6:11 says the world was filled with violence. God had to stop this mass killing with the death of the murderers.
Imagine if God didn’t kick Adam and Eve out of the Garden to prevent them from eating from the Tree of Life and they became immortal in a sinful state (Gen 3:22-23), then there would be an eternal war between Cain and Abel, and no flood could stop it because the humans were immortal. In Gen 9:5-6, God then establishes the death penalty for murderers because humans obviously can’t handle the mercy he showed Cain. Seems justified to me. In Numbers 35:30-34, God says that murderers must be put to death, but only if there is more than one witness. No one can exchange the murderer’s death for a bribe. In fact, the murderer’s death can’t even be covered by an animal sacrifice. Murder pollutes the land spiritually, and the only way to cleanse the land of murder is to execute the murderer. If God let humans have eternal life after the failure in the garden, then there would have been Genesis 6 levels of violence forever. Why would a loving God allow an endless cycle of immortal violence? Imagine people tortured and abused forever; it would be hell on earth, and no one could die to escape. Death to tailor sin’s effects was necessary; we needed death because sin was so bad. This death was mainly targeted at wicked, violent people, not unborn babies.
Wicked Kings:
2 Kings 8:12 “What’s the matter, my lord?” Hazael asked him. Elisha replied, “I know the terrible things you will do to the people of Israel. You will burn their fortified cities, kill their young men with the sword, dash their little children to the ground, and rip open their pregnant women!”
2 Kings 15:16 At that time Menahem destroyed the town of Tappuah and all the surrounding countryside as far as Tirzah, because its citizens refused to surrender the town. He killed the entire population and ripped open the pregnant women.
When a wicked person does wicked stuff in the Bible, it is clearly not condoned by God, and they are punished. 2 Kings 8:7-15 is about God’s prophet Elisha confronting the next king of Aram (Syria) about his future attacks against Israel. Just like his predecessor, Ben-Hadad, he will attack Israel, and have victory because they will be in a sinful state. You can read about what Ben-Hadad did in the previous chapters of 2 Kings. Israel was besieged by foreign kings when they were in sin as a nation. Remember the curse from Deuternomy 28 from above. The Kings of Israel worshipped idols, abused the poor, stole land, and murdered innocent people, and the people copied what their leaders were doing. God allowed the Israelites to be destroyed by their enemies when they broke the covenant. It was only fair because they received the promised land by conquering the wicked Canaanites, and they were instructed not to adopt their customs. God can’t allow the Israelites to get away with the same sinful behavior that the Canaanites did, after all, He used the Israelites to punish them for those same actions. This would make God a hypocrite.
Menahem in 2 Kings 15:16 is a wicked Israelite who led a coup and took over Israel. In fact, verse 18 literally tells us, “And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord: he departed not all his days from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin.” God did not condone any of this, and he punished all of the wicked kings for their sins.
Isaiah 13:18 The attacking armies will shoot down the young men with arrows. They will have no mercy on helpless babies and will show no compassion for children.
In Isaiah 13:18, God proclaims judgment on Babylon for what they were doing to the righteous remnant of Israel and describes what the Persians would do to Babylon on their day of judgment. So verse 18 is just one of many things that happen in mass violence between warring kingdoms.
We don’t need the Bible to tell us how violent humans are; every culture around the world has had people murdering women and children in crime, assassination, and war at some point in their history. Remember, the flood story itself is the result of human sinful nature, causing mass violence in the world, and babies would have been killed. This violence was initiated by Lamach and presented as a means to attain a reward, which in turn inspires competition. Therefore, it seems reasonable to expect weak men who couldn’t fight other men to have settled for killing women and children. The God of the Bible didn’t condone it, because if one keeps reading, he punishes these things with a flood. When the Canaanites sacrificed their children to Molech (Lev 18:21, Lev 20:2-5), God punished them with the Israelite conquest. Then, when the Israelites repeated the same things (Jeremiah 32:35), this opened the door for the curse (Deut 28:15-68), which led to Babylon conquering and exiling them.
Hosea 9:13 I have watched Israel become as beautiful as Tyre. But now Israel will bring out her children for slaughter.” 14 O Lord, what should I request for your people? I will ask for wombs that don’t give birth and breasts that give no milk.
As for Hosea 9:10-16, it is enacting the curse for breaking God’s commands from Deut 28, which includes barrenness as mentioned in verse 14, as well as miscarriage, or death of a child later in life from sickness, accidents, or violence because of the lack of protection from the blessing.
Hosea 13:16 The people of Samaria must bear the consequences of their guilt because they rebelled against their God. They will be killed by an invading army, their little ones dashed to death against the ground, their pregnant women ripped open by swords.”
Hosea 13:16 is the same; the lack of protection from the blessing will allow invaders to conquer Samaria and slaughter people, which would naturally include pregnant women. These kinds of statements are used to emphasize the level of destruction and are intended to evoke a response of fear and lead to repentance in the original listeners. As stated before, punishment for sin is God’s domain unless allocated to humans for crimes that are caught in the act by two or three witnesses. The death penalty was executed as a reminder of God’s justice and a deterrent for sin. Furthermore, the exile of the nation is justified if they break His laws, because their promised land was the product of the exile of the Canaanites by Israel.
God recognizes babies in the womb as living people (Ps 139:13, Jer 1:5). In Judges 13:2-7, God forbids Samson’s mom from drinking alcohol while she was pregnant because God called him to be a Nazarite from conception. Nazarites are not allowed to drink until their vow is fulfilled, so God treated Samson like a person with a Nazarite vow even while he was in the womb. The prohibitions on his mother show that if she drank, God counted it as Samson drinking because he lived on her food.
God gave humans the right to take life after the mass violence in the pre-flood era, but that was limited to violations of the law. The death penalty was a deterrent because anyone can argue a plague or natural disaster is random and not a punishment, but being punished by the community was a more tangible fear that could be triggered when observing an execution. However, humans are not omnipotent, so sometimes people aren’t caught. This is where God’s judgment steps in. Abortion is not a punishment from God since it involves humans making decisions to kill an unborn child on their own, so nothing in the Bible from God condones this. The closest thing to a parent purposefully taking their child’s life is a sacrifice, usually to an idol. God always required the Israelites to redeem their firstborn sons (Ex 13:19-20), just as Abraham redeemed Isaac with a ram (Gen 22:12-14). He forbade sacrificing children to false gods (Lev 18:21, Lev 20:2-4).
In Romans 9:21-24, Paul says that “God is the potter and we are the clay,” implying that God has privileges that we don’t. Only God has the right to take any life without explanation, but humans are limited. Anyone who claims to have that right is actually claiming they are equal to God. Eve makes what sounds like a braggadocios statement in Gen 4:1. Most translations have Eve saying, “With the help of the LORD I have produced [acquired or brought forth] a man.” However, the Hebrew word translated produced [acquired or brought forth] is qanah(קָנָה), which can also be used in reference to God “possessing” heaven and earth (Gen 14:19 & 22). It’s also used to refer to God as the creator of Israel (Deut 32:6), of people (Ps 119:13), and wisdom (Prov 8:22).
The concept of qanah as the possessor can refer to original ownership, rather than merely becoming an owner after purchasing or receiving a gift. One interpretation is that Eve is saying she made Cain just like God created Adam, equating herself with God. Most English translations humble her a bit and add “with God’s help,” but ezer (עֵזֶר), the word for “help” in Hebrew, is not found in the Hebrew text of this passage. However, in Genesis 4:25, after Abel has been murdered, Eve is more humble when discussing the birth of Seth. She says, “God has granted me another son in place of Abel, whom Cain killed.” Here, she recognizes that children are gifts from God, rather than taking credit for doing the work. Ironically, the one she took credit for became a murderer. Either way, anyone who claims their child is their “creation” and they can “do whatever they want to it” is putting themselves in the role of God.
Resources:
Aig on Numbers 5
Desiring God – Numbers 5 and Abortion
Child – yeled (יֶלֶד)
Bereaved – Shakal (שָׁכֹל)
Acquire – qanah(קָנָה)
Help – ezer(עֵזֶר)