Exodus 21:22-23

Does this passage show that unborn children are of less value than adults?

PROBLEM: According to some translations of the Bible, this text teaches that when fighting men cause a woman to have a “miscarriage” they “shall be fined” (v. 22, RSV). But, if the fighting men caused the death of the woman, the penalty was capital punishment (v. 23). Doesn’t this prove that the unborn was not considered a human being, as the mother was?

SOLUTION: First of all, this is a mistranslation of the verse. The great Hebrew scholar, Umberto Cassuto, translated the verse correctly as follows:

Fourth, the word used for the mother’s offspring here is yeled which means “child.” It is the same word used of babies and young children in the Bible (Genesis 21:8; Exodus 2:3). Hence, the unborn is considered just as much a human as a young child is.

Sixth, other OT passages teach the full humanity of an unborn child (see comments on Psalms 51:5 and 139:13ff). The NT affirms the same view (cf. Matthew 1:20; Luke 1:41; Habakkuk 1:44).