⁶ Ask and see:
    Can a man bear children?
Then why do I see every strong man
    with his hands on his stomach like a woman in labor,^(A)
    every face turned deathly pale?^(B)

¹⁰ She is pillaged, plundered, stripped!
    Hearts melt,^(A) knees give way,
    bodies tremble, every face grows pale.^(B)

⁶ At the sight of them, nations are in anguish;^(A)
    every face turns pale.^(B)

³¹ I hear a cry as of a woman in labor,^(A)
    a groan as of one bearing her first child—
the cry of Daughter Zion^(B) gasping for breath,^(C)
    stretching out her hands^(D) and saying,
“Alas! I am fainting;
    my life is given over to murderers.”^(E)

³ At this my body is racked with pain,^(A)
    pangs seize me, like those of a woman in labor;^(B)
I am staggered by what I hear,
    I am bewildered^(C) by what I see.

¹³ Pains as of a woman in childbirth^(A) come to him,
    but he is a child without wisdom;
when the time^(B) arrives,
    he doesn’t have the sense to come out of the womb.^(C)

²³ You who live in ‘Lebanon,^[a](A)’
    who are nestled in cedar buildings,
how you will groan when pangs come upon you,
    pain^(B) like that of a woman in labor!

²⁴ We have heard reports about them,
    and our hands hang limp.^(A)
Anguish^(B) has gripped us,
    pain like that of a woman in labor.^(C)