¹⁹ How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers!^(A)

²⁹ For the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the childless women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’^{(A) 30} Then

²³ How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! There will be great distress in the land and wrath against this people.

⁵³ Because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege, you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you.^{(A) 54} Even the most gentle and sensitive man among you will have no compassion on his own brother or the wife he loves or his surviving children, ⁵⁵ and he will not give to one of them any of the flesh of his children that he is eating. It will be all he has left because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of all your cities.^{(B) 56} The most gentle and sensitive^(C) woman among you—so sensitive and gentle that she would not venture to touch the ground with the sole of her foot—will begrudge the husband she loves and her own son or daughter^(D)

¹⁷ How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers!^{(A) 18} Pray that this will not take place in winter,

⁴ (Jonathan^(A) son of Saul had a son who was lame in both feet. He was five years old when the news^(B) about Saul and Jonathan came from Jezreel. His nurse picked him up and fled, but as she hurried to leave, he fell and became disabled.^(C) His name was Mephibosheth.)^(D)