Birthpangs and travail imagery uses childbirth pain, labour, groaning, and sudden delivery to describe severe distress, judgment, transition, intercession, and suffering that gives way to promised life or renewal.
Birthpangs and travail imagery uses childbirth pain, labour, groaning, and sudden delivery to describe severe distress, judgment, transition, intercession, and suffering that gives way to promised life or renewal.
A travail-and-transition motif in which labour pains and childbirth distress represent anguish, judgment, eschatological upheaval, intercessory labour, or pain that precedes divinely promised outcome.
These examples show how Birthpangs and Travail Imagery functions in biblical language, rhetoric, poetry, prophecy, narrative, or theological imagery.
pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them
Birthpang imagery intensifies the terror and helplessness of judgment.
like as a woman with child... crieth out in her pangs
Travail language describes anguished longing for deliverance that human strength cannot produce.
like a travailing woman
The Lord compares long-withheld action to the sudden cries of labour.
before she travailed, she brought forth
Birth imagery depicts astonishing restoration brought about by God.
as of a woman in travail
The daughter of Zion's anguish is pictured as labour pain under judgment.
be in pain, and labour to bring forth
Travail imagery describes exile pain that will give way to redemption.
all these are the beginning of sorrows
The phrase evokes birthpangs as troubles that precede consummation.
a woman when she is in travail hath sorrow
Jesus uses childbirth pain and joy to explain sorrow turning into resurrection joy.
the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together
Creation's groaning is pictured as labour awaiting liberation.
I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you
Paul uses maternal travail for pastoral labour toward spiritual formation.
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