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?

Yet she went into captivity as an exile; ¹  even her infants were smashed to pieces ²  at the head of every street. They cast lots ³  for her nobility; ⁴  all her dignitaries were bound with chains.

For though you should in fact be teachers by this time, ¹  you need someone to teach you the beginning elements of God’s utterances. ²  You have gone back to needing ³  milk, not ⁴  solid food.

Abraham and Sarah were old and advancing in years; ¹  Sarah had long since passed menopause.) ² 

a nation of stern appearance that will have no regard for the elderly or pity for the young.

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 

They will come and tell about his saving deeds; ¹  they will tell a future generation what he has accomplished. ² 

Their children will be smashed to pieces before their very eyes; their houses will be looted and their wives raped.

You conceive straw, ¹  you give birth to chaff; your breath is a fire that destroys you. ² 

Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, as well as his wife and female slaves so that they were able to have children.

Jacob became furious ¹  with Rachel and exclaimed, “Am I in the place of God, who has kept you from having children?” ² 

Then the king of Egypt summoned ¹  the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this and let the boys live?” ² 

You must be sure ¹  to let the mother go, but you may take the young for yourself. Do this so that it may go well with you and you may have a long life.

your infants, your wives, and the ¹  foreigners living in your encampment, those who chop wood and those who carry water –

The sword will make people childless outside, and terror will do so inside; they will destroy ¹  both the young man and the virgin, the infant and the gray-haired man.

Let them be ¹  like a snail that melts away as it moves along! ²  Let them be like ³  stillborn babies ⁴  that never see the sun!

A baby ¹  will play over the hole of a snake; ²  over the nest ³  of a serpent an infant ⁴  will put his hand. ⁵ 

Ephraim will be struck down ¹  – their root will be dried up; they will not yield any fruit. Even if they do bear children, I will kill their precious offspring.

For this is certain: ¹  The days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never bore children, and the breasts that never nursed!’ ²