No, God Did Not Command Abortion

With the heated debate on abortion heavily present in recent news cycles, I have found more than one reference to biblical proof-texts for abortion.

There's so much to be said and I don't want to go down too many rabbit trails, so here's a simple (as simple as I can make it) explainer.

The big citation often used is of Numbers 5:11-31, which has been posited as God commanding that an adulterous woman drink an abortifacient or chemical elixir to kill her pregnancy, assuming she was pregnant (it doesn't say). 

The chapter says that the priests shall take dust from the tabernacle floor and mix it with water to make it "bitter" and if an adulterous woman is guilty, her belly will swell and thigh fall or waste away. The NIV says that the woman's abdomen swells and she will miscarry (verse 22), which is why so many people use the verse for pro-abortion, because God seems to have pushed the issue. 

The problem is that this is a recent translation. It doesn't explain what is happening with the woman's womb and her thigh adequately. What does it mean that a thigh would fall? Many scholars suggest that this is in reference to dysfunction of the genitals. First century Jewish historian Josephus has called the actions against the womb a "dropsy" or a dysfunction of the womb (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 3, Chapter 11, Section 6). At its simplest, it appears that what's going on is not a miscarriage, but a curse against the whole reproductive system -- infertility. This is made more probable in context with verse 28, which says if the woman is innocent of adultery, she will be able to conceive. These are counter-points. The opposite of being able to conceive (fertility) is infertility, not miscarriage or abortion. 

Joseph went so far as to say that the guilty woman would die by drinking the elixir. I don't think that explains why the womb and sex organs were targeted specifically, but suffice it to say that it probably wasn't about abortion. Besides, look at the drink. It was water and dust from the tabernacle floor. The tabernacle was a mobile tent, so this was essentially dirt from wherever Israel camped in their forty year desert sojourning. It's highly unlikely then that this was reference to a specific chemical compound that would abort a fetus. 

And what was with the tabernacle anyway?

It was holy ground, cleansed by the blood of a sacrificial animal, since blood contained life. It was essentially made a place of life. Its cleansing, including the floors (more than likely) was for our sake, not God's. We needed to affirm life to stand in the presence of life. The dirt of the floor was life affirming being made holy. Conceptually, the dirt should have the opposite effect of an abortifacient. It should protect. The curse of infertility was the consequence of sin, made real by the presence of life's glory in God. In essence, the drink had a dual effect. For the just, life is affirmed by fertility in verse 28. There is nothing from the temple floor that should cause an abortion. The ritual drink was a touchstone of honesty and confession before God, not a drink that does something in and of itself.

The current interpretation favoring abortion for the verse is an anachronism and is eisegetical (read into the text, not taken contextually from the text). The chapter and verse are somewhat nebulous, but in context with itself, there is nothing saying abortion or miscarriage. That is interpretive language of modern English translations, which aren't all that good. 

This verse cannot be rightfully used in support of abortion, even if that was the intent, simply because it is not clear enough. But if I had to hedge my bets, infertility seems the most plausible choice for what was happening.