It all began with a struggle. We will never discover what it was that caused the fight or precisely when it took place. Nor will we ever find out the circumstances under which two men happened to clash in the immediate vicinity of a pregnant woman. All we know is that the tussle ended in disaster. There came a point when the men, engrossed in combat and oblivious to bystanders, collided with the pregnant woman, and loss of life resulted. The Torah, at Exodus 21:22–25, provides two alternative conclusions to the incident:

In relation to either outcome, the aggressor was to be judged on the basis of regulations that appear to be fairly unremarkable. In practice, such cases would have been handled with customary dispatch, and their role in the history of halakhah should have been regarded as minor.