_{Handout 22}

The Implications of Exodus 21:22 for the Biblical View of the Sanctity of Life / of the Protection of the Unborn

I. The Generally Recognized Biblical View of Life

It is widely agreed by those who take the Bible seriously that life was created by and is a gift from God.

These are the elements of the generally recognized biblical view of life:

• Again, life was created by, and is a gift from, God.
• The creator has the right over the creature (Rom 9:20–21).
• Human beings are uniquely made “in God’s image” (Gen 1:26–27, Gen 5:1–2).
• God can, in some sense, “know us” before we are even formed in the womb (Jer 1:4–5).
• God(!) forms our inward parts and knits us together in the womb (Ps 139:13).
• We are fearfully and wonderfully made (Ps 139:14).
• God can see our unformed bodies (Ps 139:15–16).

• Humans do not have the right to kill each other simply for their own self-serving purposes; murder is expressly prohibited by God (Exod 20:13; Deut 5:17). Indeed, murder is viewed not merely as a crime against the victim, but as a crime against God (Gen 9:5–6):

  And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man. 6 Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.

• Rather, we are commanded to be careful with human life, to protect it. Some examples:

  • Deut 22:8 When you build a new house, make a parapet around your roof so that you may not bring the guilt of bloodshed on your house if someone falls from the roof.

  • Exod 21:33-34 Put a covering over a pit.

    (The passage only mentions animals, but by extension, it would also call on us to protect humans.) 33 “When a man opens a pit, or when a man digs a pit and does not cover it, and an ox or a donkey falls into it, 34 the owner of the pit shall make restoration. He shall give money to its owner, and the dead beast shall be his.”

  • Leviticus 19:16 Do nothing that endangers another person’s life.

    (The second line of this verse is not easy to translate. But the following rendering expresses the essential idea.)

    Do not go about spreading slander among your people. Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor’s life. I am the LORD.

II. A Significant Passage on the Status of the Unborn: Exodus 21:22–25.

Exodus 21:22–25 governs a situation in which two men are fighting, and strike a pregnant woman (v. 22); that much is clear. What is in question is how to translate the next clause, which describes what happens to the woman and her unborn child(ren) as a result of the trauma. A very literal rendering (a “wooden rendering”) of the words in question goes as follows:

22And if men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, and her children come out, but there is no injury, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine.

The question is: When her children “come out,” do they come out alive, or are they stillborn?

Note the words that follow: “. . . but there is no injury . . . “. If the correct understanding is that they are stillborn, the then question of “injury” would only pertain to the woman herself, because her child(ren) are already dead. If this is the case, one could translate it:

22 And if men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children (= i.e., so that she has a miscarriage), but there is no injury , the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman's husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine.

But if the correct understanding of the verse is that “her children come out ," then one would render the verse differently:

22 And if men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, and her children come out , and there is no further injury <to them, or to the mother>, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman's husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine.

The reason this question matters so much comes in verses 23–25 which follow:

23 But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.

If the correct understanding of v. 22 is that the children are stillborn, then the consequences listed in vv. 23–25 protect only the mother. But if the correct understanding of v. 22 is that the children are born alive, then the protection in vv. 23–25 would also apply to the children, not just to the mother.

To put the issue plainly:

If the consequence is potentially “life for life” (v. 23), and if that consequence protects only the mother, then the men fighting are to be fined for causing the children to be stillborn, but that’s all.

But if that consequence (“life for life”) protects both the mother and her unborn children, then the man who struck the woman and caused her to have a miscarriage is to be put to death (“life for life”). If this is the case, then the Old Testament extends the protection of life to the life of the unborn. This is why it is so crucial to correctly understand the meaning of the expression, “so that her children come out.”

English translations do not agree on how they render this verse. There are three main ways they render it.

1. Some English translations render the verse, “. . . so that she has a miscarriage . . “.

   This implies that the child / children are stillborn = are dead.

2. Other English translations render it: “. . . and she gives birth prematurely . . .”.

   This implies that they are born alive.

3. Others render it: “. . . and her children come out . . .”.

   This wording does not tell us whether her child / children are born alive or dead; it simply says that they come out.

So we now turn to see how we should understand the words, “and her children come out.”

III. How to Understand the Words “her children come out” in Exodus 21:22.

The specific wording used in Exod 21:22, “and her children come out” is not the normal way to say “to give birth” in the Old Testament. In and of itself, the clause “and her children come out” does not specify whether they are born alive, or are stillborn. Further, that specific expression is only found here in the Old Testament. So there are no other passages which we can examine to see how this specific expression is used.

• So to determine the meaning of this expression, we examine the other ways the Old Testament describes and refers to childbirth, and/or miscarriage. We ask:

  1. What is / are the normal expressions & wordings for “to give birth,” with the assumption that the children live?

  2. If the writer wanted to say, “They are born dead = they are stillborn = she had a miscarriage,” are there ways the writer could have said so, and made it clear?

1. What is / are the normal ways to say “to give birth,” meaning the children are born alive?

   The normal expression for “to give birth / to bear a (child)” occurs in the OT about 500x. It is usually used in its straight-forward sense, but can also be used figuratively, as in Isa 26:18 (“we have only given birth to wind”), and in Isa 59:4 (“they conceive mischief, and give birth to iniquity.”)

   Words that are related to it are the terms for “young boy,” “young girl,” the noun for “birth.”

   What is clear is that the normal sense of this verb and its cognates is that the child was born alive. A clear example is 2 Samuel 12, in which Bathsheba gives birth to David’s son. The son dies as an infant a few days later; nonetheless, it is clear that the son was born alive.

   So if the writer in Exod 21:22 had wanted to say, “and she gives birth to her children,” there was a common and well-understood way to say so. But the writer did not use it.

2. If the writer wanted to say, “They are born dead = they are stillborn = she had a miscarriage,” are there ways the writer could have said so, and made it clear?

   Yes, there are specific terms in the OT for “miscarry / miscarriage,” and for “stillborn (child).”

   1. There is a verb for “miscarry” and a related noun for “miscarriage”. Together they occur about 30x in the OT. In different contexts, they can be rendered “childless / make childless,” “miscarry / miscarriage,” and “barrenness / to make barren.”

      The common factor is the lack of a living child: the child in view either dies at birth, or else was stillborn, or else the mother was barren. Some examples:

      • Gen 31:38 These twenty years I have been with you. Your ewes and your female goats have not miscarried, and I have not eaten the rams of your flocks.

      • Gen 43:14 May God Almighty grant you mercy before the man, and may he send back your other brother and Benjamin. And as for me, if I am bereaved of my children, I am bereaved.”

      • Exod 23:26 None shall miscarry or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days.

      • 2 Kgs 2:21 Then he went to the spring of water and threw salt in it and said, “Thus says the LORD, I have healed this water; from now on neither death nor miscarriage shall come from it.”

   2. There is also a term for “stillborn (child).” It occurs only 3x in the OT; they are:

      • Job 3:16 Or why was I not as a hidden stillborn child, as infants who never see the light?

      • Psalm 58:8 Let them be like the snail that dissolves into slime, like the stillborn child who never sees the sun.

      • Eccles 6:3 If a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not satisfied with life’s good things, and he also has no burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he.

   The point is this: There are clear and specific terms in the Old Testament for “miscarriage” and “stillborn (child).” Exodus 21:22 does not use them. If the writer of Exodus 21:22 had wanted to make it clear to us that the child(ren) are born dead, he could easily have done so; he didn’t.

Conclusions regarding the meaning of “and her children come out” in Exodus 21:22:

The expression “and her children come out” in Exodus 21:22 uses neither the normal term for “to give birth (to a live child),” nor the available terms for either “miscarriage” or “stillborn (child).” This is because none of those choices is a truly good fit for the action described in the verse, or for the flow of thought in the verse. If the verse read, “and she gives birth,” we would reasonably assume that the children are born alive. If, on the other hand, it read, “and she has a miscarriage / they are stillborn,” then the text would be telling us explicitly that they were dead.

But rather than doing either of those, the unique wording in Exod 21:22 serves to focus the reader’s mind on the question:

• Yes, her children come out, but are the children alive & well, or are they harmed, or even dead?

So it turns out that the rather wooden rendering of v. 22 effectively describes this momentary uncertainty:

22 When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out [and . . . ???]

• → but there is no harm, then the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine.

• → 23But if there is harm . . . then you shall take . . . .

So the effect of the unique expression “and her children come out “ is that, for a brief moment, it leaves their condition uncertain to the reader.

The rendering “gives birth prematurely” is not as good. But at least it does fit with the fact that the rest of v. 22 describes the first possible outcome, “but there is no injury.”

But the rendering “and her children are stillborn / she has a miscarriage” says more than the text says.

And it introduces an element—of no small consequence(!)—that is not in the text. And when it does so, it keeps the reader from seeing the implications of this passage. The rendering “and her children are stillborn / she has a miscarriage” is not just inaccurate, but is actually a serious mis-translation of the clause “and her children come out.”

IV. Overall Conclusions Regarding the Meaning & Implications of Exodus 21:22.

In Exodus 21:22, a pregnant woman is struck by men who are fighting, and as a result of the trauma, “her children come out.” That unique expression, in & of itself, does not tell us whether the children are born alive or are stillborn. It certainly does not(!) inform us that the woman has a miscarriage and loses her children. There are clear ways in the OT to say that; this verse does not use them. Rather, the question of whether the children are well, or are harmed, or are dead, is left open by that unique expression “and her children come out.” It is the rest of v. 22, and then vv. 23–25, which spell out the possible outcomes, and which then spell out the resulting consequences.

If → other than the trauma of going into labor and delivering, there is no injury, then the man who struck her is to be fined (v. 22), but there is no further consequence beyond that.

But if → there is injury (v. 23), to the mother or(!) to her children, then “23. . . you are to take life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.”

Conclusion: What we see in Exodus 21:22 is that → it extends the protection of life, and the consequence for harming or taking a life, to the life of the unborn.

Ministry Post-script:

How we minister to women who have had an abortion is a valid question of its own. We submit that the Scriptures teach that there is complete forgiveness available to all who repent and believe the gospel.

The purpose of this handout is not to develop a ministry approach to such situations.

The purpose of this handout is to answer this question:

• Does the Bible extend the protection of life to the unborn?

• We believe the answer to that question, is “Yes.”