MORE ON THE BIBLE & ABORTION

I noted a few months ago that Biblical scholar Richard Elliot Friedman has a new book which discusses, among other things, the Bibblical view of abortion.  I've been able to find an online version through a local library and I want to excerpt his argument.

First, Friedman discusses the meaning of this commandment: “You shall not murder." From Page 43:

If the Ten Commandments forbade killing outright, then one could argue that such killing would include the act of aborting a fetus. However, that is not what the commandment says. The rendering of the Hebrew word in that commandment as “kill” in the KJV and other translations is not correct. ... As we shall discuss in the chapter on capital punishment, the word in this commandment, Hebrew r.s.h, means “murder,” not “kill,” in all of its occurrences in the Bible.(2) What the commandment forbids is intentional homicide. It refers to taking a human life with malice.

Friedman then relates this commandment to abortion:

This means that if one regards abortion as a violation of that commandment, one must first argue that abortion is consistent with the thing that that commandment prohibits. One would have to make the case that abortion would fit with what was understood as murder in ancient Israel. Or one would have to make the case that abortion is properly within the range of meaning of the word r.s.h (murder)—and that it is not more properly in the range of meaning of the word mwt (killing). Maybe one could make one of these cases, maybe not. We have to say that we know of no evidence from the Bible that such a case would be correct.

Finally, Friedman discusses a passage from the prophet Jeremiah that is used by anti-abortionists, Jeremiah 20:14-18:

14 Cursed be the day I was born!
May the day my mother bore me not be blessed!
15 Cursed be the man who brought my father the news,
who made him very glad, saying,
“A child is born to you—a son!”
16 May that man be like the towns
the LORD overthrew without pity.
May he hear wailing in the morning,
a battle cry at noon.
17 For he did not kill me in the womb,
with my mother as my grave,
her womb enlarged forever.
18 Why did I ever come out of the womb
to see trouble and sorrow
and to end my days in shame?

Friedman makes this important point:

Jeremiah is the one person in the Hebrew Bible to talk explicitly about abortion, and when he talks about abortion, he uses the term môte˘tanî, a form of the root mwt.
This is the word that is not used in the Ten Commandments. In fact, this verb never means “murder” in the Bible.

That is to say: the word that Jeremiah uses for abortion, the only word used in connection with abortion in the Bible, always refers to “killing” and never to “murder.” Conversely, the word that is used in the Ten Commandments is the Hebrew root r.s.h, which specifically means murder. The implications of this are serious: it means that the Ten Commandments cannot correctly be cited in support of present-day anti abortion positions. It means that abortion does not constitute murder by the biblical definition.