What does the Bible say about miscarriage?

One striking his servant and causing death would incur the death penalty himself, yet if the servant continued even only a day or two before dying, the penalty would not be effective. The only explanation given for this is, “for he is his money” (v. 21).

If through physical striving a woman is caused an abortion, the person responsible must pay some recompense, as the woman's husband demands, or as was to be determined by a judge. If however there were bad results for the woman, the guilty party would be held responsible for this, and the judgment would be commensurate with the injury, — “eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe” (vv. 24-25). Of course, to literally pluck out one's eye because he had blinded another's eye, would not help the injured party. But he is entitled to a fair recompense.

Israel was to give absolutely no recognition to the idols of these nations, nor compromise by following their example in anything (v. 24), but rather reject and break down the pillars thy considered sacred. This was essential if they were to really serve the Lord, and He would bless them in their daily life, preserving them too from sickness. Their women would not suffer miscarriages, nor be barren (v. 26).

"G. K." If memory serves us, we have, on a former occasion, referred to the question of the salvation of all who die in infancy. Here is our authority, "Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say to you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven. For the Son of man is come to save that which is lost." The body of the infant dies because of Adam's sin; the soul of the infant is saved by the death of Jesus.

I sympathise with you, dear brother, in the loss of your children. I was told of it. It is a sorrowful blow for the heart of the parents - that one can understand, and I believe not less sensibly on the part of those who are not, according to the measure of the Spirit of Christ. He felt, in a manner a little different it is true, the death of Lazarus, more than those who took part at it. But all this belongs to that which is down here, where everything is passing and everything is changing. But He is all the time our God. He wept, but He raised. He sympathises with us, but He has introduced the power of good, of God Himself, in the midst of evil. For us, we have to wait for the result, but it is none the less sure. I in nowise doubt that all children that die are with Him; and it is there we find that which abides, that which is perfect, that which is all of Him. We wait, but He also waits to have us. We wait with longing, but He who shall come will come, and will not tarry. We have need of patience, that after having done the will of God we may inherit the effect of the promise. I trust that Mrs.-'s heart rests in the Lord in this sorrow. It is comforting to do so; His grace is perfect. …

To remove this sentence, therefore, all David's fasting and prayer are ineffectual. The king mourns but submits, and to the question of his servants as to his change of conduct on hearing of the child's death he answers by showing that it was not mere natural grief that had actuated him, nor would he fret against the Lord by useless sorrow. The child had gone whither David himself would follow, and where he would find him: in this certainly he expresses the comfort that remains for him of meeting in eternity the babe of a few days' existence upon earth.

Here it is the Father's will which He has come to carry out, and it is not the Father's will that one of these little ones should perish. How sweet and perfect an assurance! It is only the contrary will of man that hinders his salvation: on God's part there can be no contrary one: "As I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth." Thus the little ones removed from us by death we may trust confidently to the divine love which waits on them. Our assurance as to them is rooted in the unchangeableness of the divine nature.

I do earnestly pray that this sorrow may be blessed to you and to all your dear children, that they may see how near death is, but the Lord still nearer. Assure dear M. how truly I sympathise with him. A father's sorrow, though of another character, is not less deep than a mother's. You must expect that, as time passes on, the present feeling of loss will diminish, and in a certain sense pass away too. Not that the affectionate remembrance of your poor little babe will be at all gone; but its character will be changed, and your living children and daily occupations will make it less absorbing. This is natural, and in one sense right. Living duties have their place, which cannot be rightly yielded to absorbing affections. What I would earnestly recommend to you is, to profit of the moments when the impression and present effect of it is strong; to place yourself before God, and reap all the fruit of His dispensations and tender grace. It is a time when He searches and manifests His love to the heart at the same time. May you grow much by this - surely to a mother's heart - painful occurrence.

The loss of a child. Faith will teach you to kiss a striking Lord; and so acknowledge the sovereignty of God (in the death of a child) to be above the power of us mortal men, who may pluck up a flower in the bud and not be blamed for it. If our dear Lord pluck up one of His roses, and pull down sour and green fruit before harvest, who can challenge Him? For He sendeth us to His world, as men to a market, wherein some stay many hours, and eat and drink, and buy and sell, and pass through the fair, till they be weary; and such are those who live long, and get a heavy fill of this life. And others again come slipping in to the morning market, and do neither sit nor stand, nor buy nor sell, but look about them a little, and pass presently home again; and these are infants and young ones, who end their short market in the morning, and get but a short view of the fair. Our Lord, who has numbered man's months, and set him bounds that he cannot pass, has written the length of our market, and it is easier to complain of the decree than to change it.

Thus bitterly does he deprecate the day of his birth and all connected with it. Indeed there had never been a child of Adam or a believer so visited as Job; and as yet he knew not the end, that the Lord is exceeding pitiful, and of tender mercy. He was in the depth of his trial aggravated by the silence of his friends, soon to augment it yet more by the drawn swords of their increasingly expressed suspicion. And so he asks, in the anguish of his soul, why, if such was to be his lot living, did he not die from the womb? Why should he have been so tenderly cared for to encounter at length such agony? Why did he not share the quiet of the grave with earth's grandees, who were spending life in building monuments that decay themselves, or cramming their houses with silver and gold they must leave behind; unless he had been as a still-born babe that never saw light, and thus be where the wicked trouble no more, and the weary are at rest, and the captives repose together, with no taskmaster's voice, small and great alike there, and the slave free from his master?

Verses 1-2. The first evil the wise searcher sees as a discouraging contradiction is, that God giveth a man riches, wealth, and honor so that he does not lack in anything whatever. But God does not give him the power to enjoy it, a stranger instead eats thereof. This makes impossible what he stated in the closing verses of the preceding chapter. The cherished desires of man have found no fulfilment. And if he has seen this evil, so do we still see it also. Where then is "the good and comely" of chapter 5:18? This is vanity and it is an evil disease, he confesseth.

Verses 3-9. But here is more of life's bitterness. If one should beget a hundred children and live to a very ripe old age, so old he becomes that it seems as if there is to be no burial for him at all, yet his soul is not filled with good--what then? "I say that an untimely birth is better than he, for it cometh in vanity and departeth in darkness, and the name thereof is covered with darkness; moreover it has not seen the sun nor known it; this hath rest rather than the other: yea, though he live a thousand years twice told, and yet enjoy no good; do not all go to one place?" It is a sad, sorrowful picture, yet every word of it is true as to man's existence. With all his long life and all it brings, riches and power, his soul has not the fill it needs, that which satisfies. His life ends at last and then there is the one place--the region of the unknown, the Sheol, where they all go. And about that one place there is no light; it is felt existence after death but of what nature? All is darkness! Better, far better off, is the untimely birth.

In verse 7 he comes back again to the labor that man does. It is for the mouth, yet it does not satisfy--the appetite is not filled. The hunger returns, and man must labor to satisfy it and yet it is never filled. The fool and the wise make the same experience. The wise has no advantage over the fool; and the poor man who has something to eat in sight is far better off than the rich, whose desires wander, seeking that which gratifies. Vanity and vexation of spirit! We may all sum it up in a brief sentence: Man under the sun, whatever he does, all his labors, all his riches, all his seeking for good, all his achievements cannot satisfy him, it cannot give that which the soul of man craves and needs. Nor can it ever be discovered by the searcher, the wise man, the philosopher, the scientist. What man needs is not anything "under the sun" but that which is "from above the sun."