the word may vaguely mean mischief, but the passage still clearly applies separate consequences for each scenario, which indicates that unborn offspring arent viewed in the same way. this really isnt surprising when you think about how much more common still births and high infant mortality rates probably were in those times. plus, i believe the bible alludes to stillbirth on more than one occasion. examples:
posted earlier:
Ecclesiastes 6:3 (King James Version)
"If a man beget an hundred children, and live many years, so that the days of his years be many, and his soul be not filled with good, and also that he have no burial; I say, that an untimely birth is better than he."
after comparing versions, "untimely birth" is most likely referring to stillbirth.
Job 3:11-19 (King James Version)
"Why died I not from the womb? why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly? Why did the knees prevent me? or why the breasts that I should suck? For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest, With kings and counsellors of the earth, which build desolate places for themselves; Or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver: Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been; as infants which never saw light. There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest. There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor. The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master."
|