Do not let her be like a stillborn infant coming from its mother’s womb with its flesh half eaten away.”

So he told her everything. “No razor has ever been used on my head,” he said, “because I have been a Nazirite dedicated to God from my mother’s womb. If my head were shaved, my strength would leave me, and I would become as weak as any other man.”

and said: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.”

Yet you brought me out of the womb; you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast.

From birth I was cast on you; from my mother’s womb you have been my God.

From birth I have relied on you; you brought me forth from my mother’s womb. I will ever praise you.

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

Everyone comes naked from their mother’s womb, and as everyone comes, so they depart. They take nothing from their toil that they can carry in their hands.

As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things.

The Servant of the Lord

Listen to me, you islands; hear this, you distant nations: Before I was born the Lord called me; from my mother’s womb he has spoken my name.

“How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”

But when God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace, was pleased