Then God said to the woman, “I will cause you to have much trouble when you are pregnant, and when you give birth to children, you will have great pain. You will greatly desire your husband, but he will rule over you.”
Everyone will be afraid. Pain and hurt will grab them; they will hurt like a woman giving birth to a baby. They will look at each other in fear, with their faces red like fire.
I saw those terrible things, and now I am in pain; my pains are like the pains of giving birth. What I hear makes me very afraid; what I see causes me to shake with fear.
They told Isaiah, “This is what Hezekiah says: Today is a day of sorrow and punishment and disgrace, as when a child should be born, but the mother is not strong enough to give birth to it.
Ask this question, and consider it: A man cannot have a baby. So why do I see every strong man holding his stomach in pain like a woman having a baby? Why is everyone’s face turning white like a dead man’s face?
I hear a cry like a woman having a baby, distress like a woman having her first child. It is the sound of Jerusalem gasping for breath. She lifts her hands in prayer and says, “Oh! I am about to faint before my murderers!”
When a woman gives birth to a baby, she has pain, because her time has come. But when her baby is born, she forgets the pain, because she is so happy that a child has been born into the world.
While people are saying, “We have peace and we are safe,” they will be destroyed quickly. It is like pains that come quickly to a woman having a baby. Those people will not escape.