Now, why dost thou shout aloud? A king -- is there none in thee? Hath thy counsellor perished, That taken hold of thee hath pain as a travailing woman?
And they have been troubled, Pains and pangs they take, As a travailing woman they are pained, A man at his friend they marvel, The appearance of flames -- their faces!
Therefore filled have been my loins `with' great pain, Pangs have seized me as pangs of a travailing woman, I have been bent down by hearing, I have been troubled by seeing.
And thou, be not afraid, My servant Jacob, An affirmation of Jehovah, Nor be affrighted, O Israel, For, lo, I am saving thee from afar, And thy seed from the land of their captivity, And Jacob hath turned back and rested, And is quiet, and there is none troubling.
For a voice as of a sick woman I have heard, Distress, as of one bringing forth a first-born, The voice of the daughter of Zion, She bewaileth herself, she spreadeth out her hands, `Wo to me now, for weary is my soul of slayers!'
Captured have been the cities, And the strongholds are caught, And the heart of the mighty of Moab Hath been in that day as the heart of a distressed woman.
Lo, the voice of a cry of the daughter of my people from a land afar off, Is Jehovah not in Zion? is her king not in her? Wherefore have they provoked Me with their graven images, With the vanities of a foreigner?
For many days remain do the sons of Israel without a king, and there is no prince, and there is no sacrifice, and there is no standing pillar, and there is no ephod and teraphim.
`The woman, when she may bear, hath sorrow, because her hour did come, and when she may bear the child, no more doth she remember the anguish, because of the joy that a man was born to the world.