Apologetics: Does God Support Abortion?

Spoiler Alert: No. God does not support abortion.

I had never heard this claim before until I got into my argument with an atheist. Not only did it sound like a stupid claim from the offset (which it was), but it was also one that’s a total misreading of Numbers 5:11-31, which is where critics point to there supposedly being an instruction list for the creation and distribution of a concoction that would lead to a miscarriage. However, was this actually something that was meant to abort the child or was this something else? Let’s look into it starting with what Numbers 5:11-31 actually says (NIV translation).

¹¹ Then the Lord said to Moses, ¹² “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘If a man’s wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him ¹³ so that another man has sexual relations with her, and this is hidden from her husband and her impurity is undetected (since there is no witness against her and she has not been caught in the act), ¹⁴ and if feelings of jealousy come over her husband and he suspects his wife and she is impure—or if he is jealous and suspects her even though she is not impure— ¹⁵ then he is to take his wife to the priest. He must also take an offering of a tenth of an ephah^[a] of barley flour on her behalf. He must not pour olive oil on it or put incense on it, because it is a grain offering for jealousy, a reminder-offering to draw attention to wrongdoing.

¹⁶ “‘The priest shall bring her and have her stand before the Lord. ¹⁷ Then he shall take some holy water in a clay jar and put some dust from the tabernacle floor into the water. ¹⁸ After the priest has had the woman stand before the Lord, he shall loosen her hair and place in her hands the reminder-offering, the grain offering for jealousy, while he himself holds the bitter water that brings a curse. ¹⁹ Then the priest shall put the woman under oath and say to her, “If no other man has had sexual relations with you and you have not gone astray and become impure while married to your husband, may this bitter water that brings a curse not harm you. ²⁰ But if you have gone astray while married to your husband and you have made yourself impure by having sexual relations with a man other than your husband”— ²¹ here the priest is to put the woman under this curse—“may the Lord cause you to become a curse^[b] among your people when he makes your womb miscarry and your abdomen swell. ²² May this water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen swells or your womb miscarries.”

“‘Then the woman is to say, “Amen. So be it.”

²³ “‘The priest is to write these curses on a scroll and then wash them off into the bitter water. ²⁴ He shall make the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and this water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering will enter her. ²⁵ The priest is to take from her hands the grain offering for jealousy, wave it before the Lord and bring it to the altar. ²⁶ The priest is then to take a handful of the grain offering as a memorial^[c] offering and burn it on the altar; after that, he is to have the woman drink the water. ²⁷ If she has made herself impure and been unfaithful to her husband, this will be the result: When she is made to drink the water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering, it will enter her, her abdomen will swell and her womb will miscarry, and she will become a curse. ²⁸ If, however, the woman has not made herself impure, but is clean, she will be cleared of guilt and will be able to have children.

²⁹ “‘This, then, is the law of jealousy when a woman goes astray and makes herself impure while married to her husband, ³⁰ or when feelings of jealousy come over a man because he suspects his wife. The priest is to have her stand before the Lord and is to apply this entire law to her. ³¹ The husband will be innocent of any wrongdoing, but the woman will bear the consequences of her sin.’”

While this sounds really bad and does sound like this argument posed by deconstructors actually has some grounds in reality, let’s look at a few things here. First of all, it’s not a requirement that the woman be pregnant while taking this test (traditional interpretations even prohibited it from being performed on pregnant women), nor are the ingredients used something that would cause an abortion. The “bitter water” was really just water with a bunch of gross stuff in it that would not have caused any sort of miscarriage or abortion. Any strange side effects like the shriveling/swelling that’s described would be something that God supernaturally put on you. 9 times out of 10 it would be harmless. There’s also the fact that the term used to describe the area afflicted in the original texts that’s translated as “abdomen” is actually incredibly vague, with it also being used in Genesis and Judges to describe where Jacob got injured in his fight with the angel and where Ehud hid his sword, maybe suggesting that the curse could afflict anywhere in the general abdomen, hip, or thigh area. Like I said, it’s vague.

Secondly, much of this test (like with other, similar tests from the ancient world) was based on psychology. The loosening of the hair, the nasty water with the temple dust, and the jealousy offering were all things that represented holiness, submission, and repentance. If you were innocent, then you would have nothing to fear, would drink the water, and go on your merry way without any heaviness on your conscience because you did nothing wrong. If you weren’t innocent, then you would be much more afraid to drink the water in case the curse fell on you and you would be more likely to confess, especially if you were unlucky enough to have a supernatural sign placed on you by God that you had committed adultery.

Lastly, though it was a strange ritual, this test actually protected women by giving the men an outlet to test them with if they were being overly aggressive or hasty in their judgements, helping keep them safe from emotional or physical violence. In the best case, this test would’ve nearly always exonerated the woman, allowing her to keep her honor intact. At worst, it would suggest a curse of future infertility as the consequence of committing adultery. Once again, this was a way that God provided protections for women in a world where even the slightest suspicion that a woman might be an adulteress could’ve led to her being divorced, cast aside and left in poverty, or beaten to death. There is no reasonable argument that can be made that this was an early God-approved recipe for abortion.

Furthermore, the Bible is quite clear that life starts at conception, so any abortion performed would be murder. In fact, Exodus 21:22-25 actually prescribes the death sentence for anyone responsible for the intentional death of a baby in the womb, which was the same penalty for murder. What this means is that God sees an unborn baby as having the same rights and potential as an adult human, which makes the abortion argument not about whether or not the woman is ready to have a baby but is rather about the life or death of a human being made in God’s image, no matter how they might’ve come into being. To say that the Bible permits abortion anywhere is a gross misinterpretation of Scripture.

Until next time,

M.J.