and they shall be afraid. Pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman who travails; they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames.
Their inhabitants are powerless; they are terrified and ashamed. They are like grass of the field and new vegetation, grass on the roof tops, scorched before it stands.
Like a woman with child, who is in pain and cries out in her pangs when she draws near the time of her delivery, so have we been in Your sight, O Lord.
What will you say when He appoints over you those you yourself had taught to be companions to you? Shall not sorrows take hold of you, as a woman in labor?
For I have heard a voice as of a woman in labor, and the anguish as of her who brings forth her first child, the voice of the daughter of Zion, that bewails herself, that spreads her hands, saying, “Ah, woe is me, for my soul is wearied because of murderers.”
Why have I seen them dismayed and drawing back? Their mighty ones are beaten down and have taken refuge in flight, and not looking back. Terror is on every side! says the Lord.
Kerioth has been captured, and the strongholds have been seized, and the mighty men’s hearts in Moab in that day will be as the heart of a woman in her pangs.
Behold, he will mount up and fly as the eagle, and spread his wings against Bozrah; and in that day the hearts of the mighty men of Edom will be as the heart of a woman in her pangs.
The mighty men of Babylon have ceased fighting; they have remained in their strongholds. Their might has failed; they became as women. They have burned her dwelling places; the bars of her gates are broken.
And say to the forest of the Negev, Hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will kindle a fire in you, and it shall devour every green tree in you and every dry tree. The flaming flame shall not be quenched, and all faces from the south to the north shall be burned in it.
When a woman is giving birth, she has pain, because her hour has come. But as soon as she delivers the child, she no longer remembers the anguish for joy that a child is born into the world.