and they shall be afraid. Pangs and sorrows take hold of them, they are in pain as a woman in labour; they are amazed at one another, their faces aflame!
And their inhabitants were powerless, they were overthrown and put to shame, they were as the grass of the field and the green plants, as the grass on the house-tops and withered before it came up.
For I have heard a voice as of a woman in labour, the distress as of her who brings forth her first child, the voice of the daughter of Tsiyon! She bewails herself, she spreads out her hands, saying, “Woe to me, for my being faints because of killers!”
“Why do I see them afraid, turned back? And their fighters are beaten down. And they have fled in haste, and did not look back, for fear was all around,” declares יהוה.
“Qeriyoth shall be captured, and the strongholds seized. And the heart of the mighty men in Mo’aḇ on that day shall be like the heart of a woman in labour.
See, like an eagle he flies up, and spreads his wings over Botsrah. And the heart of the mighty men of Eḏom in that day shall be like the heart of a woman in her pain.
“The sovereign of Baḇel has heard the report about them, and his hands became weak. Distress has taken hold of him, pain like that of a woman in labour.
The mighty men of Baḇel have ceased to fight, they remained in their strongholds. Their might has failed, they became like women, they have burned her dwelling places. The bars of her gate have been broken.
“And you shall say to the forest of the South, ‘Hear the word of יהוה! Thus said the Master יהוה, “See, I am kindling a fire in you, and it shall devour every green tree and every dry tree in you – the blazing flame is not quenched. And it shall burn all faces from the south to the north.
She is empty, even emptiness and waste! And the heart has melted, and the knees have knocked together, and much pain is in all loins, and all their faces have become flushed.
“The woman has grief when she is in labour, because her hour has come, but as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the affliction, for joy that a man was born into the world.