26:16 O Lord, in distress they looked for you;
they uttered incantations because of your discipline.
26:17 As when a pregnant woman gets ready to deliver
and strains and cries out because of her labor pains,
so were we because of you, O Lord.
26:18 We were pregnant, we strained,
we gave birth, as it were, to wind.
We cannot produce deliverance on the earth;
people to populate the world are not born.