If men who are fighting strike a pregnant woman and her child is born prematurely, but there is no further injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman’s husband demands and as the court allows.
22. If men strive, and hurt a woman. This passage at first sight is ambiguous, for if the word death It will be seen that the word אסון in the text is translated by C., mors; in A V., mischief. “The Chaldee expounds it, (says Ainsworth,) no death; but it implieth less also than death, as the words following manifest.
The law shields pregnant women with tender care, the tree and fruit must not be destroyed together. God's providence protects those who fear Him in child-bearing. Yet mark this: the lex talionis belongs to magistrates and God's hand in providence, never to private revenge, which would make men like fishes of the sea, devouring one another.
AI summary
Commenting on Exodus 21:22-36
If men strive,.... Quarrel and fight with one another, which is to be understood of Hebrews, as Aben Ezra observes: and hurt a woman with child; who being the wife of one of them, and also an Israelitish woman, interposes to part them, or help her husband; but the other, instead of striking his antagonist as he intended, gives her a blow: so that her...