Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

BIRTH PANGS

Birth pains are an inescapable fundament of human existence. Gen. 3:16 specifically mentions them as part of the curse on humankind, alongside death and the necessity of toil. Although there is an obvious connection between the horror of labor pain and the joy of a birth, the biblical texts often use the pain imagery by itself.

Birth pangs are an intense and perilous form of pain. Rachel’s death while giving birth to Benjamin is described with realism in Gen. 35:16-18. The pain and peril are also clear in Jer. 4:31; 30:12-15, where the pain is a figure for God’s judgment. Significantly in 1 En. 62:4-6 the mechanics of childbirth are mentioned, but the birth itself is not; no figurative child is to be born to the kings and governors who are under judgment; the intense pain is all they have. This is so even in some NT passages (e.g., 1 Thess. 5:3; cf. Mark 13:17 par.). We must not read birth into passages that do not contain it.

Birth pangs are a helpless pain. The prophets in particular describe the opponents of God as laboring women (e.g., Jer. 48:41; 49:22, 24; 50:41-43; Isa. 13:6-8; 26:17-18; 42:14; Ps. 48:4-6[MT 5-7]; cf. 1 QH 5). These are not hopeful passages, but images of pain, ineffectuality, and humiliation (cf. Jer. 6:24; 13:21; 22:23; 30:6). This may be the background of Rom. 8, , featuring not only birth pains but frustration and the mixed metaphor of adoption. In Gal. 4:19 it is Paul who feels the birth pangs until Christ is “formed in you,” an ironic expression of his helplessness.

Birth pangs can, however, be a productive pain. Some passages make explicit what others omit. In John 16:20-22 the pain is not denied but subsumed under the joy. There seems to be precedent for seeing an apocalyptic pattern of judgment and restoration in labor pains and childbirth (Isa. 66:6-9; Mic. 4:10; 5:3-4[2-3]; and explicitly in 1 QH 3; b. Sanh. 97-98; cf. Rev. 12:1-6).

Finally, birth pangs are a pain that must run their course: a period of time rather than a point. Thus in Mic. 4:9-10 with 5:3(2) this era before the figurative birth seems the focus rather than the predicted birth itself (so also rabbinic discussions of the “birth pains of the Messiah”; b. Sanh. 97-98; Ketub. 111a; Šabb. 118). In addition, there is a sense of inexorable process. Once begun, there is no escape; it must run to completion. The onset of birth pangs are not yet the end, but the beginning of the process that must surely lead to the end (4 Ezra 16:37-39; Mark 13 par.; cf. 4 Ezra 4:40-42; Acts 2:24).

Birth pangs are found through the whole sweep of the canon, from Genesis to Revelation. But by Revelation, the dominant image has been turned around. Once, the terrible appearance of Yahweh renders his enemies like women in labor. In Rev. 12, , however, it is the Enemy who parades with ferocity while Salvation arrives through the humility of birth pangs and childbirth.

See Messianic Woes.

Bibliography. D. C. Allison, Jr., The End of the Ages Has Come (Philadelphia, 1985); G. Bertram, “ōdín, ōdínō,” TDNT 9:667-74; C. Gempf, “The Imagery of Birth Pangs in the New Testament,” TynBul 45 (1994): 119-35.

Conrad Gempf