Jerusalem, why are you ¹  now shouting so loudly? ²  Has your king disappeared? ³  Has your wise leader ⁴  been destroyed? Is this why ⁵  pain grips ⁶  you as if you were a woman in labor?

When her labor was at its hardest, ¹  the midwife said to her, “Don’t be afraid, for you are having another son.” ² 

The priest ¹  is to present it before the Lord and make atonement ²  on her behalf, and she will be clean ³  from her flow of blood. ⁴  This is the law of the one who bears a child, for the male or the female child.

Her towns ¹  will be captured. Her fortresses will be taken. At that time the soldiers of Moab will be frightened like a woman in labor. ² 

But she will be delivered through childbearing, ¹  if she ²  continues in faith and love and holiness with self-control.

Then she will remain ¹  thirty-three days in blood purity. ²  She must not touch anything holy and she must not enter the sanctuary until the days of her purification are fulfilled. ³ 

If she bears a female child, she will be impure fourteen days as during her menstrual flow, and she will remain sixty-six days in ¹  blood purity. ² 

As she was dying, the women who were there with her said, “Don’t be afraid! You have given birth to a son!” But she did not reply or pay any attention. ¹ 

The Maidens about His Beloved: Who is this coming up from the desert, leaning on her beloved? The Beloved to Her Lover: Under the apple tree I aroused you; ¹  there your mother conceived you, there she who bore you was in labor of childbirth. ² 

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?

Then I will reply, ¹  ‘I will bring them back from the land of the north. I will gather them in from the distant parts of the earth. Blind and lame people will come with them, so will pregnant women and women about to give birth. A vast throng of people will come back here.

Look! Like an eagle with outspread wings, a nation will soar up and swoop down on Bozrah. At that time the soldiers of Edom will be as fearful as a woman in labor.” ¹ 

Now ¹  the dragon’s ²  tail swept away a third of the stars in heaven and hurled them to the earth. Then ³  the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born.

“Shout for joy, O barren one who has not given birth! Give a joyful shout and cry out, you who have not been in labor! For the children of the desolate one are more numerous than the children of the married woman,” says the Lord.