PART 3 of The Woman in Travail: How Birth Became the Bible’s Most Powerful End-Times Metaphor
Jeremiah’s Intensive Use — The Prophet of Anguish
**NOTE**
This is Part 3 of an 8-part paid subscriber series.
We’re tracing the “woman in travail” metaphor from its ancient origins through the Hebrew prophets and into the New Testament. By the end, you’ll understand why the early church saw all of history as a long labor, groaning for the final revelation of God’s kingdom.
By comparing the Masoretic Text and Septuagint, we’re not just studying translation differences; we’re watching how different communities of faith understood God’s word and passed it on. The LXX sometimes softens the Hebrew, sometimes sharpens it, and sometimes interprets it in ways that shaped early Christian theology.
Understanding both traditions deepens our reading of Scripture and enriches our grasp of how God’s people have wrestled with these texts across millennia.
Hello brothers and sisters.
In Parts 1 and 2, we established the ancient Near Eastern context of the birth pang metaphor and examined Isaiah’s strategic deployment of the imagery across four key passages.
Isaiah showed us how the metaphor could describe judgment on Gentile nations (Babylon), personal prophetic anguish, Israel’s own suffering, and finally the miraculous birth of the new Jerusalem.
If you missed either post, you can check them out below:
Now we turn to Jeremiah, who saturates his prophecy with birth imagery to an extent unmatched by any other prophet. If Isaiah introduced the metaphor, Jeremiah made it his signature.
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Why Jeremiah Loved (and Lived) This Metaphor
No prophet in Scripture uses birth pang imagery more extensively than Jeremiah. By my count, at least eight major passages in Jeremiah employ this metaphor. Which does not include the numerous additional references to crying out, writhing, and anguish that echo the language of labor without explicitly mentioning it.
Why did Jeremiah lean so heavily on this particular image?
The answer, I believe, lies in the nature of his prophetic calling and the historical moment in which he ministered. Jeremiah prophesied during the final decades of Judah’s existence as an independent kingdom (roughly 627-586 BC). He witnessed the Babylonian invasions, the destruction of Jerusalem, the burning of the Temple, and the exile of his people. His entire ministry was one long labor pain: a prolonged, escalating agony as the old order died and something new (though Jeremiah couldn’t yet see what) was being born.
More personally, Jeremiah himself embodied the anguish he described. He was the weeping prophet, the man who lamented his own birth (Jer 20:14-18), who was forbidden to marry or have children (Jer 16:1-4), who was beaten, imprisoned, and thrown into a cistern. When Jeremiah reaches for the metaphor of a woman in travail, he’s not speaking abstractly. He knows what it feels like to cry out in pain you cannot control, to writhe under suffering you cannot escape, to be gripped by something bigger than yourself that must run its course.
Birth pangs were not just Jeremiah’s favorite metaphor. They were his lived experience.
The Key Passages: A Survey
Let’s examine Jeremiah’s major uses of birth pang imagery chronologically as they appear in the Hebrew text (remembering, of course, that the Septuagint orders some of these passages differently—more on that below).
1. Jeremiah 4:31 — The Daughter of Zion’s First Cry
MT: כִּי קוֹל כְּחוֹלָה שָׁמַעְתִּי צָרָה כְּמַבְכִּירָה קוֹל בַּת־צִיּוֹן תִּתְיַפֵּחַ תְּפָרֵשׂ כַּפֶּיהָ אוֹי־נָא לִי כִּי־עָיְפָה נַפְשִׁי לְהֹרְגִים
Literal: “For I have heard a voice as of a woman in travail (cholah), anguish as of one bringing forth her first child (mabkirah), the voice of the daughter of Zion gasping for breath, stretching out her hands: ‘Woe is me! For my soul faints before murderers.’”
This is Jeremiah’s first deployment of the metaphor, and it’s striking because it’s Jerusalem herself who is in labor. Not Babylon. Not the enemy nations. The people of God are writhing in birth pangs.
Notice the Hebrew vocabulary:
חוֹלָה (cholah) — from the root חוּל (chul), “to writhe, twist, whirl”
מַבְכִּירָה (mabkirah) — “one bringing forth her first child”
The term mabkirah is particularly vivid. Any woman who has given birth knows that first labors are typically the longest, most difficult, and most terrifying. You don’t yet know what to expect. You don’t yet have the confidence that comes from having successfully delivered a baby before. Jeremiah is saying that Jerusalem’s anguish is like a first-time mother’s labor: raw, overwhelming, and filled with fear.
LXX Rendering:
The Septuagint translates cholah with ὠδίνω (ōdinō), “to suffer birth pangs,” the same Greek verb that will become standard in the New Testament for this metaphor. Interestingly, the LXX renders mabkirah more literally as πρωτοτόκου (prōtotokou), “firstborn” or “first birth,” preserving the sense that this is a first labor.
2. Jeremiah 6:24 — Terror Seizes the Warriors
MT: שָׁמַעְנוּ אֶת־שָׁמְעוֹ רָפוּ יָדֵינוּ צָרָה הֶחֱזִקַתְנוּ חִיל כַּיּוֹלֵדָה
Literal: “We have heard the report of it; our hands fall helpless; anguish has seized us, pain as of a woman in labor (ka-yoledah).”
Here the metaphor shifts perspective. In 4:31, we heard Jerusalem’s own voice crying out. Now, in 6:24, we hear the enemy’s reaction to impending judgment. Even the invaders— the strong men, the warriors —will experience terror so profound it feels like childbirth.
Note the progression:
“Our hands fall helpless” — Loss of strength, inability to fight
“Anguish has seized us” — The Hebrew word צָרָה (tzarah) means distress, tribulation; you are caught in the grip of something inescapable
“Pain as of a woman in labor” — The ultimate image of inescapable, escalating suffering
Theological Significance:
Jeremiah is universalizing the metaphor. Birth pangs don’t just describe what happens to God’s people under judgment. They describe what happens to anyone caught in the machinery of divine justice. Babylon will judge Jerusalem, but then Babylon itself will writhe in labor (as we’ll see in Jer 50:43).
LXX Rendering:
The LXX again uses ὡς τικτούσης (hōs tiktousēs), “as one giving birth,” using the verb τίκτω (tiktō) which emphasizes the actual act of delivery rather than just the pangs. This is slightly different from the Hebrew yoledah (a woman in the process of laboring) but captures the same essential imagery.
