Yahweh is an abortionist! Well, kind of sort of

Well, sort of, per Numbers 5, as Almighty God himself (no, really, he's on Twitter) reminded me recently.

I've read the passage more than once, though surely it's been more than a decade since I last looked at it and it didn't jump out then as an abortion proof text.

And, really, it's not.

As part of the Priestly Code section of the Tanakh, it's about purity in and of Eretz Israel. Within that, it's about extramarital sex and extramarital pregnancy, similar to the themes that Ezra articulates about Israel being married to non-Israelites.

But, within all of that, it does not only allow but commands the use of a potential abortifactant as a chemical version of medieval trials by fire or trials by water. I quote:

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. … 

 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.” … 

 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.

There you are.

So, again, it's not about abortion per se. It's about ritual purity in general and sexual purity in particular.

And, note that it's about women as inferior.

There's no prescription for the cuckolded husband to bring "the other man" before a priest and to make HIM drink something that will make his nuts drop off if he has foisted a bastard child on the cuckold.

That said, it is pro-abortion in that it says that the life of an unborn baby or fetus counts even less than the wife of that woman.

So, it's sexist.

And, on ritual purity, coming from material edited by Ezra who told people to divorce foreign wives, it's arguably Zionist.

So, don't quote Jeremiah 1:15 and its "Before you formed, in the womb I knew you." Yahweh arguably knew the lesser life of the mother and the greater life of the father, too.

Besides, I'll quote back Isaiah 45:7: "I form the light and create darkness. I bring prosperity and create disaster."

And, beyond that, per Francisco Ayala and human conception's 25-35 percent spontaneous abortion rate, God IS the great abortionist if you believe he exists.