177 I. THE OLDER TESTAMENT PROTECTS HUMAN FETUSES FROM ABORTION "Look, children are an inheritance from the Lord - and the fruit of the womb is His reward! Children of youth - are like arrows in the hands of a warrior. Happy is the man whose quiver is full of them! ... As for [the ungodly in] Ephraim, their glory shall fly away like a bird...even from conception.... Ephraim shall bring forth his children to the murderer.... They [in Ephraim] shall raise no fruit.... [For ungodly] Israel is a vine emptying the fruit it yields." - Psalm 127:3-5 & Hosea 9:11 to 10:1. 1139.   The Older Testament of God's Holy Word regards the intentional and unlawful killing also of prenatal human beings as the crime of murder. This is so: a) because all human beings image God, even from their very conception onward; b) because mankind as God's image intuitively recognizes that all murderers, regardless of the age of their victims, should be put to death by society; and c) because also God Himself requires that whoever slaughters a [wo]man, including a tiny [wo]man within a [wo]man, shall have his or her own blood shed by his or her fellow man - inasmuch as God made man and woman as His image. Genesis 1:26-28; 4:1-14; 6:5-13; 9:5-6. 1140.   In addition, however, the Older Testament further provides for very serious penalties - whenever a pregnant woman and/or her unborn child is negligently or even only accidentally killed or harmed or disadvantaged. Much of this chapter will thus deal especially with the locus classicus on that matter - viz. Exodus 21:22f. For that passage indeed illustrates what a very high premium also the Older Testament puts upon the lives and the limbs of all human beings - including all those not yet born - and how it protects and honours them too. Because this text requires that even accidental damage to pregnant women and/or their unborn babies is to be punished - a fortiori it obviously implies far greater punishments for deliberate damage to them by way of induced intentional abortions. Overview of this chapter on abortion in the Older Testament 1141.   n this chapter, we shall examine seriatim: the nature of murder, miscarriage, and abortion; the testimony of encyclopaedias anent abortion; and the character of IUDs alias Intra- Uterine Devices. Then we shall consider the issue of human death and abortion immediately prior to and right after the fall - and the later divinely-appointed punishment by man for human bloodshedding after the great flood in terms of the Noachic Covenant. (Elsewhere, we shall see that also as regards abortion, this was later echoed: by the Codex Hammurabi; in Ancient Ireland and India; by Buddhism, Zoroastrianism and Ancient Paganism; and in Judaistic and Islamic Monotheism as well as in Trinitarian Christianity.) 1142.   Here, from Exodus 20:13, we shall see the anti-abortionistic thrust of God's Sixth Commandment not just for the Ancient Israelites but also for all humanity. Then, we shall look at the prohibition of abortion implied in the locus classicus Exodus 21:22f - and examine its 'general equity' for all people of all nations and all religions for all time. 1143.   Thereafter, we will look at the strong anti-abortionism of the Post-Mosaic parts of the Older Testament. In so doing, we shall see that abortion was always either explicitly or implicitly condemned as a heinous transgression of God's Moral Law. The nature of murder, miscarriage, and abortion 1144.   The age at which persons are murdered, is irrelevant to the sinfulness and the criminality of the murder. So the premeditated manslaughter: of an adult; suicide; the intentional euthanasia of octogenarians; or the criminal abortive killings of the unborn - are all