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)
7 How awful that day^(C) will be!
    No other will be like it.
It will be a time of trouble^(D) for Jacob,
    but he will be saved^(E) out of it.

⁸ Terror^(A) will seize them,
    pain and anguish will grip^(B) them;
    they will writhe like a woman in labor.^(C)
They will look aghast at each other,
    their faces aflame.^(D)

⁹ He settles the childless^(A) woman in her home
    as a happy mother of children.

Praise the Lord.

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)

¹⁴ “I will deliver this people from the power of the grave;^(D)
    I will redeem them from death.^(E)
Where, O death, are your plagues?
    Where, O grave, is your destruction?^(F)

“I will have no compassion,

¹⁶ Lord, they came to you in their distress;^(A)
    when you disciplined^(B) them,
    they could barely whisper^(C) a prayer.^[a]
17 As a pregnant woman about to give birth^(D)
    writhes and cries out in her pain,
    so were we in your presence, Lord.
¹⁸ We were with child, we writhed in labor,
    but we gave birth^(E) to wind.
We have not brought salvation^(F) to the earth,
    and the people of the world have not come to life.^(G)

¹⁰ Writhe in agony, Daughter Zion,
    like a woman in labor,
for now you must leave the city
    to camp in the open field.
You will go to Babylon;^(A)
    there you will be rescued.
There the Lord will redeem^(B) you
    out of the hand of your enemies.