One of the women said, “My master, this woman and I live in the same house. I had a baby while she was with me in the house.

“Do I bring a baby to the birth opening and then not deliver it?” asks the Lord. “Or do I bring a baby to the point of delivery and then hold it back?” asks your God. ¹ 

Cursed be the man who made my father very glad when he brought him the news that a baby boy had been born to him! ¹ 

This was the one who exploited ¹  our people ²  and was cruel to our ancestors, ³  forcing them to abandon ⁴  their infants so they would die. ⁵ 

and said to him, “Do you hear what they are saying?” Jesus said to them, “Yes. Have you never read, ‘Out of the mouths of children and nursing infants you have prepared praise for yourself’?” ¹ 

But ¹  the midwives feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them; they let the boys live. ² 

Naomi took the child and placed him on her lap; ¹  she became his caregiver. ² 

Or why ¹  was ²  I not buried ³  like a stillborn infant, ⁴  like infants ⁵  who have never seen the light? ⁶ 

The fatherless child is snatched ¹  from the breast, ²  the infant of the poor is taken as a pledge. ³ 

See the one who is pregnant with wickedness, who conceives destructive plans, and gives birth to harmful lies – ¹ 

כ (Kaf) My eyes are worn out ¹  from weeping; ²  my stomach is in knots. ³  My heart ⁴  is poured out on the ground due to the destruction ⁵  of my helpless people; ⁶  children and infants faint in the town squares.

The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew ¹  women are not like the Egyptian women – for the Hebrew women ²  are vigorous; they give birth before the midwife gets to them!” ³ 

Do not let her be like a baby born dead, whose flesh is half-consumed when it comes out of its ¹  mother’s womb!”

As for Nob, the city of the priests, he struck down with the sword men and women, children and infants, oxen, donkeys, and sheep – all with the sword.

I got up in the morning to nurse my son, and there he was, ¹  dead! But when I examined him carefully in the morning, I realized it was not my baby.” ² 

They shed innocent blood – the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan. The land was polluted by bloodshed. ¹ 

Can a woman forget her baby who nurses at her breast? ¹  Can she withhold compassion from the child she has borne? ²  Even if mothers ³  were to forget, I could never forget you! ⁴ 

Ask yourselves this and consider it carefully: ¹  Have you ever seen a man give birth to a baby? Why then do I see all these strong men grabbing their stomachs in pain like ²  a woman giving birth? And why do their faces turn so deathly pale?

Gather the people; sanctify an assembly! Gather the elders; gather the children and the nursing infants. Let the bridegroom come out from his bedroom and the bride from her private quarters. ¹ 

When a woman gives birth, she has distress ¹  because her time ²  has come, but when her child is born, she no longer remembers the suffering because of her joy that a human being ³  has been born into the world. ⁴