Were Abortions Induced on Old Testament Adulteresses?
00:00:00.000 | Many questions in our inbox are questions that I could never anticipate myself, like
00:00:10.000 | this one today.
00:00:11.000 | It's sent to us by a listener named Jessica.
00:00:14.040 | Here's what Jessica writes us.
00:00:15.760 | "Hello Pastor John and thank you for this podcast.
00:00:18.600 | I was recently confronted by an abortion advocate about a chapter in the Bible.
00:00:23.280 | I was then and remain now quite perplexed about its meaning.
00:00:28.240 | We read that suspicion of infidelity in the Old Testament triggered a potentially dangerous
00:00:33.160 | ritual in which a woman was put on trial, made to drink a potion of sorts, and if she
00:00:39.320 | was found guilty, the verdict was rendered in a physical consequence.
00:00:44.860 | The verses are Numbers 5, 22 and 27, Numbers chapter 5, verse 22 and 27, texts which say
00:00:52.240 | that the adulterous woman's "thigh shall fall away."
00:00:58.080 | That's the ESV translation, "thigh shall fall away," which doesn't make any sense to me.
00:01:03.160 | Other translations say the consequence is "miscarriage and untimely birth."
00:01:09.880 | That's according to the NEB and REB translations.
00:01:12.760 | Basically, a guilty verdict was rendered by an induced abortion.
00:01:17.640 | In fact, that's the interpretation I found in Old Testament scholar Norman Henry Snath's
00:01:21.560 | commentary on Leviticus and Numbers.
00:01:23.880 | On linguistic grounds, he says "cause and abortion" is a possible interpretation here.
00:01:31.080 | I was surprised.
00:01:32.080 | Pastor John, how would you respond to this?
00:01:35.280 | My response is first to ask, was this abortion advocate seriously willing to follow where
00:01:45.160 | the Scriptures lead, or was this simply a superficial cheap shot because a text might
00:01:54.680 | picture God as aborting a child?
00:01:58.840 | I don't know the answer to that question, but it would make a difference personally
00:02:04.440 | in how I spoke to that person directly.
00:02:08.420 | My second response is to say that I don't think we can have any confidence that this
00:02:16.680 | text describes an abortion or a God-caused miscarriage.
00:02:21.900 | In fact, I think a good case can be made that this is not what's happening, and I'll come
00:02:28.120 | back to that.
00:02:29.360 | My third response is that even if God were pictured here as bringing about the miscarriage
00:02:37.640 | as part of the punishment for adultery, that would not give us any right at all to take
00:02:45.560 | the life of the unborn.
00:02:47.440 | All of life is in God's hands.
00:02:50.360 | He owns it.
00:02:52.160 | He gives it and he takes it according to his own infinite wisdom.
00:02:57.360 | It's his, and therefore he gives it where we can't and he takes it where we shouldn't
00:03:05.400 | because we are not God.
00:03:08.520 | So let me say a word about each of those three responses.
00:03:11.960 | If a person comes to us with a biblical objection to our pro-life position, it may be that the
00:03:20.120 | most helpful and hopeful thing that we could do is sincerely offer them to sit down and
00:03:29.120 | do a study, a serious study together with them, of what the whole Bible has to say about
00:03:36.520 | the unborn and the rights we have or don't have to intrude upon God's person-forming
00:03:43.600 | work in the womb, as it says in Psalm 139.
00:03:49.320 | That might be the test of the sincerity of their objection.
00:03:53.880 | Second, let's look at what the text actually says in Numbers 5.
00:04:00.600 | The situation is that a husband has accused his wife of committing adultery against him,
00:04:06.600 | but he has no proof.
00:04:08.480 | He brings her to the priest who sets up a test to determine her guilt or innocence.
00:04:15.680 | He mixes holy water with dust from the tabernacle floor and has her drink it.
00:04:24.320 | Significantly, the test is designed so that her innocence is assumed and what has to be
00:04:32.360 | proved is her guilt, not her innocence.
00:04:36.240 | The ordeal is favorable for the defendant, namely the woman.
00:04:41.480 | In other words, it's not as though if nothing happens, she's guilty.
00:04:46.920 | No.
00:04:48.240 | Something extraordinary has to happen to prove her guilt, indeed something supernatural.
00:04:54.560 | The assumption is God will decide this case.
00:04:58.100 | If she's guilty, verse 22 describes what will happen.
00:05:02.640 | Here's the wording.
00:05:04.940 | May this water that brings the curse pass into your bowels and make your womb swell
00:05:12.680 | and your thigh fall away.
00:05:16.240 | If that does not happen, she's innocent.
00:05:19.520 | Now, Jessica points out that some interpreters take this falling away of the thigh as a miscarriage
00:05:28.440 | or an induced abortion from God.
00:05:33.440 | This is a pure guess.
00:05:36.760 | Nobody knows for sure what those words falling away of the thigh mean.
00:05:44.220 | That wording is not a common idiom, not as though the writer used an idiom here that
00:05:49.160 | we all know from elsewhere means miscarriage.
00:05:52.340 | We don't.
00:05:53.500 | We only have this context to go on.
00:05:56.800 | And I think the text, the context here, points in a different direction.
00:06:03.680 | First of all, the Hebrew word for thigh can mean hip, as it does when Jacob's hip is put
00:06:12.040 | out of joint, or can mean loins, including the sexual organs, as when Abraham's servant
00:06:19.380 | swears by putting his hand in that sacred place of reproduction.
00:06:25.420 | The falling of the woman's loins would be a very odd way to describe a miscarriage,
00:06:34.360 | but it would not be an odd way to describe a vaginal prolapse.
00:06:41.040 | A prolapse, which my grandmother had to have surgery for while she was living with Noel
00:06:46.720 | and me, that's why I know about this.
00:06:49.300 | A prolapse is what happens when the pelvis muscles and tissues can no longer support
00:06:56.780 | the female sexual organs because the muscles and tissues are weak or damaged, which causes
00:07:02.800 | one or more of the pelvic organs to drop or press into or out of the vagina.
00:07:10.660 | Now that's an easily treatable situation today with surgery.
00:07:16.600 | In those days, that must have been hard.
00:07:19.960 | And then notice verse 28 shows us what this punishment involves by contrasting it with
00:07:28.860 | the woman who proves innocent.
00:07:30.160 | Here's what it says in verse 28.
00:07:33.040 | But if the woman has not defiled herself and is clean, then she shall be free and shall
00:07:40.840 | conceive children.
00:07:43.960 | In other words, the focus of the punishment is not on miscarriage, but on the fact that
00:07:49.240 | the innocent will go on to have children and the guilty woman won't, because that's the
00:07:55.520 | effect of the falling of the loins, I'm suggesting.
00:08:00.480 | Now, suppose my interpretation is wrong, which it could be because none of us knows for sure
00:08:07.840 | what the falling away of the thigh or the loins means.
00:08:12.720 | And suppose this text really does say God, the just judge, decreed that the child in
00:08:22.600 | the woman, supposing there was one, doesn't say, was aborted.
00:08:29.400 | Suppose that.
00:08:30.400 | What does that tell us about the life of the unborn and our right to take it or not?
00:08:38.680 | And the answer is nothing, nothing, because we are not God.
00:08:44.000 | God says in Deuteronomy 32, 29, "See now that I, even I, am he.
00:08:50.080 | There is no God besides me.
00:08:51.520 | I kill and I make alive.
00:08:53.720 | I wound and I heal.
00:08:55.880 | There is none that can deliver out of my hand."
00:08:58.600 | In other words, to be God is to have rights over life and death that others don't have.
00:09:06.640 | Hannah speaks for God in the same way in 1 Samuel 2, 6, when she says, "The Lord kills
00:09:14.800 | and the Lord brings to life.
00:09:17.080 | He brings down to Sheol and raises up."
00:09:20.760 | And Job, when he lost all ten of his children, said, and the verse following says he didn't
00:09:27.880 | sin when he said this, "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.
00:09:34.760 | Let it be the name of the Lord."
00:09:37.320 | In other words, one of the things it means to be God is to have absolute rights over
00:09:44.040 | human life.
00:09:46.280 | God made all life.
00:09:49.400 | All life belongs to him.
00:09:52.400 | Only God can say, Ezekiel 18, 4, in truth, "Behold, all souls are mine."
00:10:00.920 | Therefore, God's decision to take the life of an unborn child does not give us any permission
00:10:11.480 | to do the same.
00:10:13.800 | Any more than God's giving us his own son in crucifixion gives us the right to kill
00:10:21.240 | Jesus.
00:10:23.880 | God ordains the death of his own son not to legitimate murder, but to make it possible
00:10:33.040 | for murderers to be saved, including those who take the life of the unborn.
00:10:38.960 | Amen.
00:10:39.960 | Thank you, Pastor John, for taking up this fascinating question.
00:10:43.600 | And thank you for joining us today and for sending in questions of your own.
00:10:47.000 | You can ask a question of your own, search our growing archive, or subscribe to the podcast,
00:10:50.360 | all at AskPastorJohn.com.
00:10:53.920 | Well, next time we are going to talk about John Piper's affiliations, who he hangs out
00:10:58.320 | with, and why.
00:10:59.680 | And he will explain how he makes those decisions.
00:11:02.760 | I'm your host Tony Rehnke.
00:11:03.760 | We'll see you back here on Monday.
00:11:04.880 | Have a great weekend.
00:11:06.000 | [END]
00:11:11.000 | 1. What is John Piper's affiliation?