Because human rights prior to birth is such a politically-charged topic, the general trend is that people will read their own political views into this text.
I suggest that, if we consider the text authoritative, this is backwards, our views should derive from the meaning of the text, the meaning of the text should not derive from our views. However, human nature being what it is, there are two common, very different contemporary interpretations of this passage (and a variety of sub-interpretations) that broadly align with modern political debates on abortion.
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Interpretation 1
The verse describes a woman going into labor due to injury, which does not necessarily imply a miscarriage. The phrase "so that her fruit depart from her" does not tell us one way or the other whether the child has survived or died. Thus, the "mischief" that follows applies to the woman or the child. The following circumstances are possible:
- The woman goes into labor and mom and baby are healthy. The perpetrator is fined and nothing more.
- The woman goes into labor and delivers an unhealthy baby. Mom recovers, but the baby is injured and/or dies. The perpetrator pays life for life, injury for injury, for harming the baby.
- The woman goes into labor and delivers a healthy baby, but the woman has complications and is injured and/or dies. The perpetrator pays life for life, injury for injury, for harming the mother.
- The woman goes into labor and both mom & baby suffer injury and/or death. The perpetrator pays life for life, injury for injury, for harming the mother and for harming the baby.
On this interpretation, the baby is being treated as a human person, and injury to the baby is treated as injury to any other human would be under the Law of Moses.
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Interpretation 2
The phrase "so that her fruit depart from her" describes a miscarriage--the baby dies. The subsequent "mischief" focuses specifically on harm to the mother. Let us consider the same 4 possibilities, and their outcomes, on this interpretation:
- The woman goes into labor and mom and baby are healthy. The penalties described in this passage are not enacted, because there was no miscarriage.
- The woman goes into labor and delivers an unhealthy baby. Mom recovers, but the baby is injured and/or dies. If the baby dies, the perpetrator is fined and nothing more. If the baby is injured but lives, there is no penalty because there was no miscarriage.
- The woman goes into labor and delivers a healthy baby, but the woman has complications and is injured and/or dies. The perpetrator pays life for life, injury for injury, for harming the mother.
- The woman goes into labor and both mom & baby suffer injury and/or death. The perpetrator pays life for life, injury for injury, for harming the mother, but not for harming the baby.
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Key Hebrew words involved
As noted by Greg Koukl here:
The Hebrew noun translated “child” in this passage is yeled (yeladim in the plural), and means “child, son, boy, or youth.” It comes from the primary root word yalad, meaning “to bear, bring forth, or beget.” In the NASB yalad is translated “childbirth” 10 times, some form of “gave birth” over 50 times, and either “bore,” “born,” or “borne” 180 times.
The verb yasa is a primary, primitive root that means “to go or come
out.” It is used over a thousand times in the Hebrew Scriptures and
has been translated 165 different ways in the NASB—escape, exported,
go forth, proceed, take out, to name a few....
What’s most interesting is to see how frequently yasa refers to the
emergence of a living thing:
...[examples cited inclue Genesis 1:24, Genesis 8:17, Genesis 15:4,
Genesis 25:26, 1 Kings 8:9, 2 Kings 20:18, Jeremiah 1:5]...
As you can see, it’s common for yasa to describe the “coming forth” of
something living, frequently a child. There is only one time yasa is
clearly used for a dead child. Numbers 12:12 says, “Oh, do not let her
be like one dead, whose flesh is half eaten away when he comes from
his mother’s womb!”
Note here, that we don’t infer the child’s death from the word yasa,
but from explicit statements in the context. This is a still-birth,
not a miscarriage. The child is dead before the birth (“whose flesh is
half eaten away”), and doesn’t die as a result of the untimely
delivery, as in a miscarriage.
Yasa is used 1,061 times in the Hebrew Bible. It is never translated
“miscarriage” in any other case. Why should the Exodus passage be any
different?
The verb does not require the translation miscarriage, which would be odd, unclear from context, and over-specified. As already noted by Dottard, Hebrew had other words to describe a more specific outcome; the verb in "so that her fruit depart from her" merely indicates that the woman delivered a child (or children).
Child or children?
With respect to child vs. children, I believe the Keil and Delitzsch Commentary is straightforward:
The plural ילדיה is employed for the purpose of speaking indefinitely, because there might possibly be more than one child in the womb.
This then would not be a description of injury to one of the woman's other, older children--the Torah already has rules to specify punishment for injuring them--but this is very specifically in the context of giving birth--the only children in scope in this verse are those that are in the womb.
"Further"
As noted by John Piper here:
Verse 22 says, "[If] her children go forth and there is no injury . . ." It does not say, "[If] her children go forth and there is no further injury . . ." (NASB, 1972 edition; corrected in the 1995 update). The word "further" is not in the original text.
Thus, the Hebrew text is not describing a) miscarriage + b) any further injury. It is describing a) the deliver of the baby + b) any injury associated with it.
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How this was understood by other writers
The only substantial, near-contemporary writings we have from this culture are the other texts of the Old Testament. As noted above by Koukl, in just over a thousand uses in the Old Testament, יָצָא refers to miscarriage once - and in order to indicate that this is what is meant in this singular usage, the word מוּת ("to die") is included in the same sentence so that it is clear that the baby has died. Unless clearly specified by referring unambiguously to death, the Old Testament writings do not use יָצָא to describe a miscarriage.
If we incorporate writings from many centuries later, by those familiar with the Old Testament, I see 3 sources that should be noted:
- The Septuagint: as already noted by Dottard, the Septuagint translators appear to understand a difference between an unborn child who has "developed into a human form" versus one who has not, and the penalty envisioned differs based on the level of the child's development (as further discussed in the aforementioned Keil and Delitzsch Commentary). This is not dissimilar to the belief in "quickening", the idea that there comes a point in pregnancy when the spirit enters the body. However, the Septuagint is not explicit on this matter.
- Rabbinic writings: Gill's Exposition notes that the Targum of Jonathan, the Targum of Onkelos, Jarchi, and Aben Ezra understand the "mischief" to refer only to injury to the woman, not the child, while also acknowledging the variation of interpretations that exist for this passage.
- The Didache: this early Christian text (written circa AD 100) is heavily influenced by Old & New Testament writings. It takes an unambiguous position against abortion, indicating that the unborn child is a person who can be wronged:
you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is begotten. (Didache chapter 2)
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Summary
I respectfully suggest that no amount of argumentation will convince anyone with entrenched views on the rights of the unborn to interpret this passage as a prooftext that disagrees with what they already believe. Efforts to compel the Biblical text to say what we want it to say are neither new nor surprising--we see a clear awareness of and warning against this natural, human tendency in the Bible itself (e.g. 2 Peter 3:16).
I will offer 3 reasons for concluding that, in context, Interpretation 1 (described above) is the most viable meaning of this passage:
יָצָא does not specifically describe a miscarriage in which the baby dies. Contemporary writings--including hundreds of examples in the Torah itself--do not understand the word in this way. In fact, the verb is used 93 additional times in just the book of Exodus, and none of them describe a miscarriage.
If there is no physical punishment for physically harming the baby, what is the point of this passage in the first place? That an injury to a woman--pregnant or not--dictated the "eye for an eye" consequence is already covered elsewhere in the Torah. The only purpose this passage would serve, if not to punish injury to an unborn child, would be to specify a reason for a fine. This would make the passage vague, and all discussion of penalties for harming the mother redundant. In the context of this chapter, penalties are laid out for numerous crimes. Capital punishment is declared for inflicting fatal injury to a human; fines are declared for inflicting non-fatal injury to a human and for certain fatal injuries to animals. Death of an unborn child is clearly fatal...so either a) the passage lays out physical punishment for injury to an unborn child or b) the punishment for the death of an unborn human is of the same form as the punishment for accidentally killing on ox.
The four scenarios laid out above under Interpretation 1 and Interpretation 2 demonstrate a glaring inconsistency in Interpretation 2. Interpretation 1 clearly specifies what to do if the baby dies, if the baby is injured but lives, or if the baby lives and is just fine. Interpretation 2 does not do this! Under interpretation 2, if the baby suffers injury but lives, there is no penalty to the perpetrator. That a human being may suffer life-long consequences from a birth defect, and there is no consequence to the one who inflicted the injury, is glaringly inconsistent with the lex talonis (law of retaliation) described in the Torah. Furthermore, this interpretation would mean that there was no penalty to a man for striking a woman unless the woman suffered notable injury. That striking a woman was "okay" as long as the blow wasn't hard enough to cause severe injury, is an idea clearly rejected by Jewish sages (source).
Interpretation 2 requires that the Torah does not forbid harming an unborn child to any degree as long as the child does not die, and that the Torah prescribes no punishment for a man striking a woman unless the woman is visibly wounded. However we may feel about lex talonis, it is clearly the policy of the Torah. On this basis, I suggest Interpretation 2 is much weaker than Interpretation 1; Interpretation 1 is to be preferred:
Is Exodus 21:22 about a premature birth or a miscarriage?
Premature birth. The Torah applies lex talonis to injury inflicted on the unborn.