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Exod 21:22-24
Comparing the LXX and the MT of this passage is very interesting. The MT
reads (in rough trans.)--"and if men fight and they strike a pregant woman
and her child(ren) [pl. in Heb.] come out, but there is no injury, he [the
person who struck the woman] must be fined what the husband of the woman
demands of him and the judges allow; but if there is injury [to whom??,
the woman and/or to the child?] then you must take life for life, etc."
The vagueness of the MT on the question of what "injury" is meant
to whose injury is relevant [the woman's and/or the child's] is perhaps
the major problem in understanding fully the passage. But one good
impression is that the MT at least permits, and may well privilege the
reading that there is to be a fine for striking the woman if the premature
birth is safe for woman and child, but a more serious penalty if either
woman or prematurely born child suffers anything beyond premature birth.
The LXX, however, appears to present the passage as distinguishing
twixt a case where the prematurely born child is "not fully formed" (me
exeikonismenon), meaning so early in pregnancy that there is not an
observable "child" that comes forth, on the one hand, and, on the other
hand a case where the prematurely born child is "formed" (exeikonismenon).
In the latter case, the penalty shall be "life for life, etc." (v. 23f.).
Larry Hurtado, Religion, Univ. of Manitoba
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