The woman in childbirth is pictured as gasping for breath
and stretching her hands out in agony. The birth is painful and deadly. Instead of bringing new life to Jerusalem it is, in fact, bringing about her death. She cries out, Woe is me! I am fainting before murderers.
Those she turned to as a prostitute are taking her life. The consequences of her unfaithfulness are now finally becoming reality.1 Fainting
refers to the ebbing away of Jerusalem’s life and may refer to the city under a long siege, slowly dying of hunger.2
31 For I heard a cry as of a woman in labor, anguish as of one giving birth to her first child, the cry of the daughter of Zion gasping for breath, stretching out her hands, “Woe is me! I am fainting before murderers.”