Therefore are my loins filled with feebleness, and pangs have seized me as a travailing woman; I dealt wrongfully that I might not hear; I hastened that I might not see.

My heart wanders, and transgression overwhelms me; my soul is occupied with fear.

And as a woman in labor draws near to be delivered, [and] cries out in her pain; so have we been to Your beloved.

They saw, and so they wondered; they were troubled, they were moved.

Trembling took hold of them; there were the pangs as of a woman in travail.

Ask, and see if a male has ever born a child? And [ask] concerning the fear, why they shall hold their loins, and [look for] safety; for I have seen every man, and his hands are on his loins; [their] faces are turned to paleness.

The king of Babylon heard the sound of them, and his hands grew feeble. Anguish overcame him, pangs as of a woman in travail.

In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote in front of the lamp on the plaster of the wall of the king's house: and the king saw the knuckles of the hand that wrote.

Then the king's countenance changed, and his thoughts troubled him, and the joints of his hips were loosed, and his knees knocked one another.

For when they say, "Peace and safety!" then sudden destruction comes upon them, just as labor pains upon the woman that is pregnant, and they shall by no means escape.

Before them shall the people be crushed; every face [shall be] as the blackness of a caldron.

[There is] thrusting forth, and shaking, and tumult, and heart breaking, and loosing of knees, and pangs on all loins; and the faces of all are as the blackening of a pot.