A fine? That's fine.

[pasithea]

So... How come anti-choice whackos never quote this line in Exodus?

21:22 If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit
depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely
punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he
shall pay as the judges determine.

I mean that seems to say that an abortion is alright if the woman isn't married or her husband consents, and if it was someone who wanted to keep the pregnancy, then they can press charges and that person has to pay a fine.

I mean this looks like a pretty explicit and surprisingly coherent ruling on abortions.

Do they not mention it because it doesn't say what they want?

I mean it's right there just barely 10 lines after the '10 commandments', which seem to be an arbitrarily chosen set of rules from a larger set of rules.

Also worth noting that when someone kills their slave, servant, wife, etc, the wording is, "And if they do this, they shall surely die." For those keeping score, that's the exact same wording that's used when they're cast out of the Garden of Eden. Since Adam and Eve didn't die immediately, doesn't that imply...

And oh dear! What about THIS rule?

22:21 Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.

I wonder what that means for the Fred Phelps' of the world.

It was important enough to be said twice.

23:9 Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.

Comments

[kyhwana.livejournal.com]

Which is why they say you should be a virgin when you marry, no sex before marriage, then magically the situation you bring up wouldn't happen!

Although, you have to remember that in those days, most parents (their fathers rather) betrothed/married off their daughters when they were still teenagers/earlier, so an unmarried woman would be pretty rare or uncommon.

[sci.livejournal.com]

But vexing strangers makes me smile!
Usually by standing behind shelves in shops and "whispering" about smuggling diamonds loud enough for the person in the next isle to hear.

[kyhwana.livejournal.com]

Thats what exodus was about, the jeeews escaping egypt..
At least from what I recall. I havn't read Exodus again yet.

[paka.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'd spotted the fine-for-stillbirths! This is the closest I've hit to an abortion related passage so far.

The implication about humanity's relationship to G-d; you notice that there are two trees, and G-d basically says that humanity is practically equal to Her now - the only reason they aren't equal is that they haven't eaten from the tree of life. And there's more to blathering about that one...

The strangers in the land of Egypt line crops up a lot. Again, it's the big thing that I see in the Torah as literature; like Shakespeare, you can go digging and find support for whatever you really want to find. With the Phelps types, there'd be some sort of lame excuse about how they're doing it for peoples' own good. Feh.

This is nice. I'm really glad that we're doing this at the same time; you reading this gives me perspective I don't think I got last time I read through the Torah.

[kynn.livejournal.com]

There's a lot in the bible about how you should be nice to the foreigner among you, since you were foreigners in Egypt. The conservatives ignore all this, of course, since then they'd have to stop hating immigrants. But the biblical text is clear: there are explicit instructions to treat "illegals" fairly.

[zeeth_kyrah]

Phelps and his family believe that everyone's going to hell, including them. They're just making sure the world knows it. And, I guess, trying to reserve the best spots there for themselves.