Exodus 21 Usurping a Woman's Bodily Autonomy
Blog Series #5 Biblical Foundations, Part 6a Exodus 21:22-25 Old Testament References to the Termination of Pregnancy
Since I began this blog nearly a year ago, I have referred to the Old Testament text of Exodus 21: 22-25 a few times. I have basically completed an analysis of the passage in bits and pieces already. Now, in November of 2023, I hope to pull all those pieces together to form one comprehensive analysis readers can go to for reference. If some of this seems familiar to you, that’s because you’ve seen it before in another post of my tattered journal.
Exodus 21: 22-25
22 “If people are fighting and hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely[a] but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows. 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.
[footnote] a. Exodus 21:22 Or she has a miscarriage
New International Version (NIV) 2011 edition
The following is an excerpt from my blog ‘Usurp’ Is The Name of That Dragon posted January 17, 2023. It is difficult to see where a copied passage begins and ends in this format I’m using, so I will place a double asterisk * * at the beginning and end of each long passage that I paste here:
* * This moment ranked high in the scenes my Creator chose to bring me back to as He answered my question: “What is YOUR opinion on abortion?”
The concept of ‘usurp’ loomed large as I continued on my journey.
One of the books I discovered on my quest was Reverend Doctor Rebecca Todd Peters’ Trust Women.
It was there that I learned for the first time that abortion is not actually mentioned in the Bible
at all.
Evangelical preachers had me believing otherwise for at least two decades of my adult life.
I learned from Kira Schlesinger in her book ProChoice and Christian that one possible exception might be found in Exodus 21:22-24, footnote ‘a’ in the New International Version, where a miscarriage (‘spontaneous abortion’ in medical terms) results in a monetary fine for the fighting people who harm a pregnant woman and cause her pregnancy to fail. As I conducted my own study of the passage, two things occurred to me:
When ’she gives birth prematurely’ is interpreted as ‘she has a miscarriage’ in verse 22, then
a. the terms ‘no serious injury’ in verse 22 and ‘serious injury’ in verse 23 refer only to the pregnant woman not the miscarried fetus, and
b. the value of the human fetus was reduced to a monetary fine by ancient Hebrews.
The reason for the fine was not because a death had occurred, but because the woman’s authority to make choices about her own body, decide whether to carry a pregnancy full-term or not, had been USURPED by the two guys wrestling near her. Since wives were the property of their husbands in those days, it was actually the husband’s authority over his wife’s body that had been usurped by the two fighting men. The men had to pay the fine to the husband for usurping his authority over his wife and, by extension, the life-support system her body powered, maintained, and regulated.
Recently, Rabi Daniel Fink made a third observation about this text in a fascinating conversation with Rebecca Todd Peters in Boise [at Cathedral of the Rockies United Methodist Church] on November 9, 2022. If you follow this link to the conversation on YouTube, Rabi Fink begins to speak at minute marker 21. He interprets verse 22 of Exodus 21 as referring to a miscarriage, and explains to protestant Christians that Jews never have considered an aborted fetus to be a murdered human being. The evidence of this is in the fact that Exodus 21 is establishing judicial law in regard to capital punishment – an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, life for a life, etc. Yet, a human life is not levied as the penalty for causing the spontaneous abortion of a human fetus.
Only a monetary fine is required as compensation to the husband, the owner of the damaged property. * *
I wrote this passage in my Usurp blog nearly 10 months ago. Here is a current article by Rev. Dr. Rebecca Todd Peters on her post-Roe perspective about abortion rights. More recently in this Biblical Foundations blog series, I have referred again to this passage in Exodus 21, its historical context and its possible interpretations. The following is an excerpt from Twisting Scriptures, Conflating Words for Political Gain:
* * It is interesting to note that in the Old Testament there does not seem to be a Hebrew word for ‘unborn fetus.’ If there is one, it is not used much in the Old Testament Scriptures. . . . This is evident in Exodus 21: 22-25 where the lack of object nouns in the English translation of verses 22 and 23 leaves the reader wondering if it was the fetus or the pregnant woman that received the ‘injury.’ Where the original Hebrew ‘Yasa Yeled’ literally means ‘children come forth’ or ‘bring out young adults’ (here is an article on ‘Yeled and Yasa’ ) the English translators have opted to relegate the noun for ‘young person’ as an implied noun, focusing instead on verb phrases such as ‘give birth prematurely’ or ‘miscarry.’ These English treatments of the text omit altogether the object receiving the action.
One clue that explains this lack of nouns in the Hebrew language, or . . . the ancient Hebrews’ inability to differentiate the unborn fetus linguistically from a breathing, autonomous child can be found in rabbinic thoughts such as this one from Rabi Mara Nathan:
“Until the baby is born, JUDAISM CONSIDERS THE FETUS TO BE PART OF THE WOMAN’S BODY. She is never the villain when difficult choices need to be made. That’s not to say that all Jewish communities are comfortable with women having autonomy, authority or public power. We know this is not the case in most traditional religious communities. But the fact remains that the Torah, the Mishnah, the Talmud and later rabbinic sources consider the woman’s physical and emotional health before that of the fetus. In other words, Judaism has always been pro-choice.” (all-caps emphasis mine)
When the Ancient Hebrew language didn’t artificially conflate unborn fetuses with children, it fused the unborn fetus with the body of the pregnant woman sustaining its existence. One can see how, linguistically, this begins to pose some serious problems when trying to translate Scripture within the context of our post-modern scientific age. Today, due primarily to scientific and medical advancement, we have a linguistic vocabulary that illustrates these differentials. The Ancient Hebrews did not. * *
Since this post is getting long, I’ll close by referencing Dr. Joel M. Hoffman here. He has more to say on the English translation of nouns for infant, child, and fetus in Bible passages such as Exodus 21. You can check out his ‘God Didn’t Say That’ blog and this article ‘What Does the Bible Really Say About Abortion?’
What I come back to time and again as I read commentaries on Exodus 21:22-25 is this: whether the fetus undergoes premature birth or is miscarried, the woman’s God-given AUTHORITY over her own body and it’s functions was usurped by the two fighting men. It is my view that this infraction on God’s Design for ProCreation was important enough to our Creator that He saw to it some sort of legal acknowledgment of the infraction was encoded into Hebraic Law — whether the monetary fine was paid directly to the woman, or to her husband as the property owner.
