When approaching abortion in the Old Testament, there are a number of ways it could be addressed. Perhaps the clearest avenue would be in dealing with the issue of child sacrifice, that first appears in the narrative of Abraham, which spans through the time of the post-exilic Prophets and the Intertestamental or Second Temple period. Though the evil of child sacrifice can be argued to stem from the same conceptual cesspool as abortion, it is not a direct one-to-one equation. This elicits the question: does the Old Testament have such an equivalent? Surprisingly, the answer is yes.
First, as we have stated elsewhere, to demand explicit use of the term “abortion” by the biblical writers as the criteria for the legitimacy of a biblical anti-abortion position, is near-sighted at best. There are many issues addressed by the ancient writers of the texts comprising the Old Testament, that when translated, do not have an exact terminological equivalent. This is one of the difficulties text-critical scholars and translators have faced for years. Hence the phrase “lost in translation.”
With this in mind, Scott Morschauser Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Ancient and Medieval History at Rowan University, in a linguistic and contextual analysis of Exodus 1:16, demonstrates that chemical abortion is indeed in view, though exact terminology is not explicitly used. We’ve included the majority of Morschauser’s article below and will also include a link to the entire article at the end of our discussion.
Potters’ Wheels and Pregnancies: A Note on Exodus 1:16
“The beginning of the exodus story recounts a change of leadership in Egypt. A new king who “did not know Joseph” implements a program of oppression against the descendants of Jacob. Dissatisfied with the results of his policy of forced labor, the unnamed sovereign decides to treat the Israelites with further malevolence. Summoning the “midwives” Shiphrah and Puah, he announces his sinister intention: “When you serve as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him; but if it is a daughter, she shall live” (Exod 1:16 RSV).
A perusal of modern versions will indicate that the previous rendering is widely accepted. Despite such agreement, a number of problems remain unresolved. The term ָא ְב ָנ ִים of the MT has been a crux, although the suggestion that it refers to some sort of obstetric aid has long pedigree. Moreover, some translators have regarded the phrase ְר ִאי ֶתן ַעל־ ָה ָא ְב ָנ ִים וּ as difficult. To make sense of the passage, the need was felt to supply a pronoun referring back to the supposed antecedent ָה ִע ְבִריּוֹת : “when you see <them> (the Hebrew women) upon the ‘birthstool’….”
Although this interpretation is tempting, questions arise concerning the accuracy of such a proposal, especially in light of the immediate sequel. As is well known, the female personnel do not follow the decree (Exod 1:17b). When news of the women’s failure reaches the king, he demands an explanation for their negligence, to which Shiphrah and Puah make the duplicitous reply: “… the Hebrew women … are delivered before the midwife comes to them …” (Exod 1:19). Surprisingly, given the portrait that has been drawn of this monarch, the answer is wholly satisfactory to the pharaoh, insofar as the two women escape punishment.
But why would either a premature or unattended birth annul the main thrust of the royal command? If one accepts the usual interpretations of v. 16, the excuse offered by Shiphrah and Puah would not have solved their dilemma. The absence of a midwife would hardly have freed the women from their duty to their sovereign: they still would have the information necessary to carry out their task. However, the next stage in this process, wherein the ruler ratchets up the pressure and demands that his subjects drown the Hebrew infants, makes it probable that the midwives’ mission had been formulated in a different fashion. Apparently, their order had been to eliminate the males prior to their birth, but once delivered, they were to be permitted to survive.
This raises the possibility that both the translation and exegesis of v. 16 are in need of revision. ַעל־ A possible solution may be furnished by positing that an “Egyptianism” underlies the phrase To an extent, this vignette’s focus on the midwives reflects some familiarity with Egyptian . ָה ָא ְב ָנ ִים culture, particularly the renown it had throughout the ancient world in the field of gynecological practice. The attempts to see in ָָא ְב ָנ ִים a birthing device were largely shaped by suppositions about obstetric techniques from the Nile Valley. By the same token, while the use of “bricks” or “stools” in labor is sometimes attested, Jer 18:3 demonstrates that ָא ְב ָנ ִים can only refer to a “potter’s wheel”:
“I went down to the potter’s house, and behold, he was doing work upon the wheel (־הָאְבָנִים )” The phrase is exactly the same as in Exod 1:16. The recognition that women likely did not bear offspring on such a contraption led to the attempts to explain the term as something other than what it was.
Yet the “potter’s wheel” is regularly linked to pregnancy in ancient Egyptian religious literature and art. The implement (Eg. nḥp/nḥb) was associated with the creator-god, Khnum, a ram-headed deity who was depicted as an artisan. In mythopoetic texts, Khnum would mold and shape each human being at conception “upon his wheel,” with the potential child being granted the physical and psychological traits that would define it as an individual—obviously including characteristics of gender. During this time of fashioning, the developing infant was said to be “upon the potter’s wheel” (ḥr nḥp), from which it would hopefully be delivered hale and hearty. What is significant, is that the metaphor refers to a gestating fetus prior to parturition.
We suggest that the Hebrew is an adaptation of the idiom ḥr nḥp and refers to a child still forming in the womb that has not yet come to full term. Grammatically, ־ָהָאְבָנִים is most likely an example of casus pendens, or anticipatory emphasis. The prepositional phrase has been moved forward to stress the circumstances surrounding the time of the midwives’ examination (רִאיֶתםו): “When you look/determine ‘upon the potter’s wheel’ [i.e., when you undertake a prenatal examination], if it is a son, then terminate him; if it is a daughter, she shall live.”
Such a procedure would have been within the scope of ancient Egyptian knowledge and practice. Medical texts contain prognostic recipes for determining the sex of an unborn child, as well as prescriptions for ending a pregnancy through draughts and potions.
Within the narrative logic and progression of Exodus, the royal injunction of Exod 1:16 should thus be understood as an intermediate measure in a campaign of increasing violence against the Israelites. The demand for the elimination of unborn males stands midway between the rigors of the corvée initially inflicted upon the adult community of Israel and the subsequent command to the Egyptian populace to commit outright infanticide.”
It must be reiterated that the assumption that an explicit reference in Scripture to the English term Abortion is required for a biblical case against it to be valid is both illogical and unreasonable.
With this in mind, and recognizing the polemical nature of many of the biblical texts, especially that of the Exodus story, it ought to be evident that the orders given to the Hebrew midwives to administer abortifacients are part of the issue the writer of Exodus is addressing. This is clear from both the emphasis placed on the midwives’ refusal to do so and the emphasis on the evil of Pharaoh’s commands.
“But the midwives feared God, and they did not do as the king of Egypt had said to them. They let the boys live.” -Exodus 1:17 LEB
If abortion was not something with which the God of Israel took issue, then the order which Pharaoh gave to the midwives should not have been a problem, as it would not have been in violation of his moral code or ethics. If that were the case, Pharaoh’s actions, while driven by fear, were dictatorial or tyrannical, but not evil.
What else ought to be evident is that the use of abortifacients was not a violation of the Egyptian pantheon’s moral code or ethics. Pharaoh was obviously well enough aware of the effects of these potions and/or draughts to give such a command. This suggests that chemical abortion was a fairly common practice in ancient Egypt. And, as we have seen in the previous article [Dr. Scott Morschauser “Potters’ Wheels and Pregnancies: A Note on Exodus 1:16”, Journal of Biblical Literature 122 (2003)], the knowledge required to concoct abortifacients was attributed by Second Temple texts to the rebellion of the Watchers and antediluvian humanity.
The emphasis of the text of Exodus 1:16 demonstrates that the anti-abortion position, as well as the contention that the fetus is a living human—tracked back from the 5th century—has its roots in ancient Israelite theology and ontology. This means that the position held by the early Christian community was not novel. It was the view held by those faithful to God throughout the ages. Abortion is at odds withthe morals and ethics of the Kingdom of God. They are antithetical to one another.
[Here’s the link: Dr. Scott Morschauser “Potters’ Wheels and Pregnancies: A Note on Exodus 1:16”, Journal of Biblical Literature 122 (2003)]