2 Esdras 4:40-42

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

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 fetus 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.^{(A) 42} For just as a woman who is in labor makes haste to escape the pangs of birth, so also do these places hasten to give back those things who were committed to them from the beginning.