Abortion & “Thou shall not murder” Conundrum (Pt 2 of Abortion and the Bible series)

Abortion & “Thou shall not murder” Conundrum (Pt 2 of Abortion and the Bible series)

The Bible influences our way of viewing the world. Whether we are religious or not. Because of the country’s unique formation under the pressures and ascendancy of Christianity, the United States continues to witness the impact of religious beliefs in its legislation and ideals. Legislation surrounding capital punishment, gay marriage, and today’s topic…abortion, were and continue to be scrutinized and held up against the Bible’s stances on these matters. Never mind the fact that the Bible states people who commit adultery are to receive capital punishment and and marriage meant brides were bought and committed to a man without her consent. Those minor details seem to have been left on the cutting room floor when the Bible was being used as the “moral compass” of US legislation.

But today we’re looking specifically at abortion and one of the Bible’s most used passages to defend pro-life legislation and why this passage doesn’t mean what we think it means…

Abortion is never mentioned in the Bible. But that doesn’t mean abortions were not happening. As Richard Elliot Friedman and Shawna Dolansky describe:

Abortions were always performed in human history, but, after all, it was a revolution in technology that made the procedure safe enough and common enough to turn it into the issue that it is in this generation, and the biblical texts were a couple of millennia too early for this. Thus the entry on “Abortion” in The Oxford Companion to the Bible begins with this simple statement (The Bible Now, Richard Elliott Friedman, Shawna Dolansky, 42)

Despite abortion’s lack of reference in the Bible, the conservative Christian community has been committed to using Biblical passages as reputable reasons for promoting a pro-life lifestyle as the only legal avenue for dealing with unwanted or unhealthy pregnancies.

One of the most famous passages used to support abortions is Exodus 20:13

“Thou shall not kill”

But “kill” is an incorrect translation.

The Hebrew word actually says ( תִרְצָח, — pronunciation — resha)

This word means murder with malicious intent.

And this word murder does not include religious sacrifice, mercy killings in war or in battle, or killing in self-defense.

This law condemns intentional homicide with malicious intent.

https://www.imj.org.il/en/collections/231801-0

Since the King James Version’s publication, many translations have since been updated the passage to say “thou shall not murder,” but the definition of murder in the Bible is not the same definition of murder we have today. Coming from a time and culture in which people were killed for committing adultery and it was not considered murder, this should not be a surprise.

And yet, Christians are retroactively imposing the 21st-century definition of murder on the Ancient Near Eastern definition of murder, of which they’re not the same.

Now, you might have a strong conviction that abortion is murder or not murder, but that’s not what’s being addressed here.

We’re talking about the clear distinction between what this passage means and does not mean. It means murder. But it doesn’t mean mercy killing or battle killing or sacrifice or capital punishment. And this passage is often. sued to promote pro-life legislation, when in reality, abortion would likely not have fallen under the definition of murder at that time.

Remember, the Bible does not speak on abortion directly, so we have to be careful not to use this book to support or condemn abortion.

So if one wants to claim that abortion is a violation of this specific commandment one must first prove that abortion is consistent with the Hebrew definition of murder. One would have to make the case that abortion aligns with what was understood as murder in ancient Israel, not the 21st century.

You may or may not be able to make that case, but the point is, you have to do the work of proving why abortion should equate more accurately with the Hebrew word for murder and not the Hebrew word for killing. One can not just quote the commandment and stop there.