“Let the day on which I was born perish,
And the night which announced: ‘There is a man-child conceived.’

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.

A woman, when she is in labor, has pain because her time [to give birth] has come; but when she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish because of her joy that a child has come into the world.

“No longer shall there be in it an infant who lives only a few days,
Or an old man who does not finish his days;
For the youth who dies at the age of a hundred,
And the one who does not reach the age of a hundred
Will be thought of as accursed.

‘Outside the sword will bereave,
And inside [the chambers] terror—
For both young man and virgin,
For the nursing child and the man of gray hair.

‘Ask now, and see
Whether a man can give birth [to a child].
Why then do I see every man
With his hands on his loins, as a woman in labor?
Why have all faces turned pale?

“Teacher, Moses wrote for us [a law] that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but leaves no child, his brother is to marry the widow and raise up children for his brother.

Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said in his heart, “Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? And shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?”

While she was being brought out, she [took the things Judah had given her and] sent [them along with a message] to her father-in-law, saying, “I am with child by the man to whom these articles belong.” And she added, “Please examine [them carefully] and see [clearly] to whom these things belong, the seal and the cord and staff.”

We said to my lord, ‘We have an old father and a young [brother, Benjamin, the] child of his old age. Now his brother [Joseph] is dead, and he alone is left of [the two sons born of] his mother, and his father loves him.’

Then Manoah pleaded with the Lord and said, “O Lord, please let the Man of God whom You sent come again to us and teach us what we are to do for the boy who is to be born.”

Then he said to Gehazi, “Gird up your loins (prepare now!) and take my staff in your hand, and go [to the woman’s house]; if you meet any man [along the way], do not greet him and if a man greets you, do not [stop to] answer him; and lay my staff on the face of the boy [as soon as you reach the house].”

So he went down and plunged himself into the Jordan seven times, just as the man of God had said; and his flesh was restored like that of a little child and he was clean.

“Let his flesh be restored and become fresher than in youth;
Let him return to the days of his youthful strength.

And the people will be oppressed,
Each one by another, and each one by his neighbor;
The boy will be arrogant and insolent toward the elder
And the vulgar (common) toward the honorable [person of rank].

Therefore now thus says the Lord God of hosts, the God of Israel, “Why did you commit this great evil against yourselves [bringing disaster] that will cut off from you man and woman, child and infant, out of Judah, leaving yourselves without a remnant?

And a man from the crowd shouted for help, “Teacher, I beg You to look at my son, because he is my only child;