2 Esdras 4:40-42

Common English Bible

⁴⁰ He answered me, “Go ask a pregnant woman whether her womb can keep the baby inside her when she has completed her nine months.”

⁴¹ I said, “It can’t, Lord.”

He said to me: “The underworld^[a] and the resting places of the souls are like the womb. ⁴² As the one who gives birth hastens to escape the distress of giving birth, so these also hasten to give back those things that were entrusted to them from the beginning.