²¹ What will you say when the Lord takes the allies you have cultivated
    and appoints them as your rulers?
Pangs of anguish will grip you,
    like those of a woman in labor!

⁸     and people are terrified.
Pangs of anguish grip them,
    like those of a woman in labor.
They look helplessly at one another,
    their faces aflame with fear.

³¹ I hear a cry, like that of a woman in labor,
    the groans of a woman giving birth to her first child.
It is beautiful Jerusalem^[a]
    gasping for breath and crying out,
    “Help! I’m being murdered!”

‘What fine friends you have!
    They have betrayed and misled you.
When your feet sank in the mud,
    they left you to your fate!’

³¹ the prophets give false prophecies,
    and the priests rule with an iron hand.
Worse yet, my people like it that way!
    But what will you do when the end comes?

³ What will you do when I punish you,
    when I send disaster upon you from a distant land?
To whom will you turn for help?
    Where will your treasures be safe?

⁹ Will you then boast, ‘I am a god!’
    to those who kill you?
To them you will be no god
    but merely a man!

⁴¹ Its cities will fall,
    and its strongholds will be seized.
Even the mightiest warriors will be in anguish
    like a woman in labor.