Conception in the Womb is a Creative Act of God, Genesis 2:7, 19; Jeremiah 1:5

Each formation of a human being in the womb, beginning with conception, is an intentional, creative act of God. It’s not an accident or act of chance. Conception occurs due to the sovereign act of the Creator God. Human beings are conceived because God chooses to do so. God’s creative work—described in the case of the first human—Adam, is repeated in the case of every human being thereafter, including humans in the womb.

Let me show you.

Observe that the same verbal root which describes the creation of the first human (Genesis 2:7) is again repeated in the creation of the animals (Genesis 2:19) and then repeated again in Jeremiah’s case (Jeremiah 1:5) when God fashioned him in his mum’s womb.  

 7 Then the Lord God fashioned the human out of the dust from the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the human became a living being. Genesis 2:7

19 The Lord God fashioned out of the ground every wild animal and every bird of the sky, and brought each to the man to see what he would call it. And whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. Genesis 2:19

 5 I chose you before I fashioned you in the womb;
  I set you apart before you were born.
  I appointed you a prophet to the nations. Jeremiah 1:5

Did you observe? The verb “fashioned”, used to describe God forming Adam, is repeated with God forming Jeremiah in the womb. God purposely fashioned Adam outside of a womb and he also purposely fashioned Jeremiah, beginning with conception, inside the womb. Both were intentional and personal actions. Neither case provides any room for accident or chance. Conception in the womb is a creative act of God.

With Jeremiah 1:5 we have a good example of Hebrew poetry, characterized by parallels and repetition (with variation). Yet it is important to understand that this does not imply that the verse is to be taken as less than literal.  Prophecies are predominantly given in the Hebrew Bible through the poetic genre, but their actual fulfillment is literal, historical, and to the letter.

The first two halves of Jeremiah 1:5 show perfect parallelism, repetition with variation.  Both lines begin with ‘before’. The repetition gives prominence to God’s foreknowledge of Jeremiah before his existence and before his birth. So, Jeremiah was already chosen by God and set apart before he was formed in the womb. 

The Hebrew verb used to describe his formation by God in the womb is precisely that found in the creation of Adam outside the womb in Gen 2.7. Therefore, each formation of the human being in the womb, beginning with conception, is an intentional, creative act of God, and not an act of chance or accident. Human conception occurs due to the sovereign act of the Creator God. Human beings are conceived intentionally because God chooses to do so.

 Sarah knew that the ability to conceive in the womb is an act of God. Observe her own words:

‘the Lord has impeded me from giving birth.’  Genesis 16:2

I suggest that Paul may have been thinking of Jeremiah’s case when he wrote:

But when God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not consult any man, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to see who were among the apostles before I was, but I went immediately into Arabia and later returned to Damascus. Galatians 1:15-17

This type of divine call from the Lord himself would sustain a prophet such as Jeremiah who received much opposition from his own people. Saul, who became Paul, also received opposition from his own people. It is not by coincidence that Jeremiah is known as the weeping prophet and Paul is known as the weeping apostle. They were both set apart in their mum’s womb by God for a role fraught with resistance and hostility from their own people. There was, or course, no use in Jeremiah refusing to prophesy or Paul refusing to proclaim Jesus as Messiah because their tasks had already been divinely assigned.

So, there is stress by God himself on the fact that Jeremiah was known to him prior to his formation in the womb.  All human beings, that includes you and me, are known to God before their birth because he forms them in the womb. 

Bottom line: there are no ‘mistakes’ or unwanted children for God.  You were not a mistake or conceived by accident. God conceived you and your children in your mum’s womb and proceeded to fashion you on purpose. To destroy a child in the womb, therefore, is to destroy an ongoing work of the divine artist, the Creator God, an example of his masterpieces.  This is comparable to destroying an artist’s work to shreds before it is completed.  Undoubtedly, the artist would be angered and the same can only be assumed of our divine artist, our Maker and Molder.