| Exodus 21:22
| If men quarrel, and one strike a woman with child, and she miscarry indeed, but live herself: he shall be answerable for so much damage as the woman's husband shall require, and as arbiters shall award.
| But live herself. So Josephus also reads, Antiquities 4:8. But Philo and the Septuagint have, "of a child unformed;" and ver. 23, "But if the child be formed, (exeikonismenon, animated and organized) he shall give soul for soul;" as if all were referred to the child, which the Vulgate explains of the mother. To destroy the life of either was punished with death. "She who first taught the art of expelling the tender foetus, deserved to perish by her own malice." (Ovid) (Calmet) --- The precise time when the soul begins to animate the body is so very uncertain, that, after conception, the person who should cause a miscarriage wilfully, would expose himself to incur the guilt of murder. Josephus, contra Apion ii., shews how the Jews abhorred such wickedness. The Romans punished it with death. (Haydock) --- Homicidii festinatio est prohibere nasci. (Tertullian, apol.) Onkelos says, that "if the mother should not die of the stroke, the offender was to satisfy the husband by paying a fine, to be awarded by the husband, or by the judges: but in case the mother died, he should render life for life:" (Calmet) in which decision he agrees with the Vulgate. (Haydock) --- The Hebrew is ambiguous, "If death ensue not." (Calmet)
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