To the woman He said, “I will greatly increase your pain from conception to labor. In pain will you give birth to children. Your desire will be toward your husband, yet he must rule over you.”
They will be terrified; pain and anguish will take hold of them; they will writhe as a woman in labor; they will look aghast at one another— their faces aflame!
Therefore my body is filled with pain. Pangs have taken hold of me like the pangs of a woman in labor. I am bewildered by what I hear, terrified by what I see.
Then they said to him: “Thus says Hezekiah: This day is a day of distress, rebuke and contempt. For children have come to the point of birth, and there is no strength for giving birth.
Ask now, and see whether a man can give birth. Why do I see every man with his hands on his loins, like a woman giving birth? Why have all faces turned pale?
For I heard a cry like one in labor, the anguish of one giving birth to her first child— the cry of the Daughter of Zion gasping for breath, stretching out her hands saying, “Oy , now to me! For my soul faints before murderers.”
“When a woman is in labor, she has pain because her hour has come. But when she gives birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, because of the joy that a human being has been born into the world.
When they are saying, “Shalom and safety,” sudden destruction comes upon them like a woman having birth pains in the womb—there is no way they will escape.