17 Bible Verses About Childbirth and Birth Pains

The Bible describes childbirth as hard and sometimes fatal labor, and its writers use that labor as a picture of distress that ends in something new. Pain in childbirth enters the story in Genesis 3:16, among the consequences God names after the fall. Jesus turns to labor in John 16:21, where a mother forgets her anguish “because of her joy that a child is born into the world.” Scripture also narrates particular births: Rebekah’s twins (Genesis 25:24-26), Rachel’s death on…