2 Esdras 4:40-42

Revised Standard Version

⁴⁰ He answered me and said, “Go and ask a woman who is with child if, when her nine months have been completed, her womb can keep the child within her any longer.”

⁴¹ And I said, “No, lord, it cannot.”

And he said to me, “In Hades the chambers of the souls are like the womb. ⁴² For just as a woman who is in travail 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.