2 Esdras 4:40-42

New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised

⁴⁰ He answered me and said, ‘Go and ask a pregnant woman whether, when her nine months have been completed, her womb can keep the foetus within her any longer.’

⁴¹ And I said, ‘No, lord, it cannot.’

He said to me, ‘In Hades the chambers of the souls are like the womb. ⁴² For just as a woman who is in labour makes haste to escape the pangs of birth, so also do these places hasten to give back those things that were committed to them from the beginning.