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. ⁴³ Then the things that you desire to see will be disclosed to you.”

³⁵ He said to me, “You cannot.” And I said, “Why not, my lord? Why, then, was I born? Or why did not my mother’s womb become my grave, so that I would not see the travail of Jacob and the exhaustion of the people of Israel?”^(A)

⁴⁶ He said to me, “Ask a woman’s womb, and say to it, ‘If you bear ten children, why one after another?’ Request it therefore to produce ten at one time.”

⁴⁷ I said, “Of course it cannot, but only each in its own time.”

⁴⁸ He said to me, “Even so I have given the womb of the earth to those who from time to time are sown in it.^{(A) 49} For as an infant does not bring forth, and a woman who has become old does not bring forth any longer, so I have made the same rule for the world that I created.”^(B)

When and How Will the End Come?

⁵⁰ Then I inquired and said, “Since you have now given me the opportunity, let me speak before you. Is our mother, of whom you have told me, still young, or is she now approaching old age?”^(C)

⁵¹ He replied to me, “Ask a woman who bears children, and she will tell you. ⁵² Say to her, ‘Why are those whom you have borne recently not like those whom you bore before, but smaller in stature?’^{(D) 53} And she herself will answer you, ‘Those born in the strength of youth are different from those born during the time of old age, when the womb is failing.’ ⁵⁴ Therefore you also should consider that you and your contemporaries are smaller in stature than those who were before you,^{(E) 55} and those who come after you will be smaller than you, as born of a creation that already is aging and passing the strength of youth.”

²¹ Children a year old shall speak with their voices, and pregnant women shall give birth to premature children at three and four months, and these shall live and leap about.

⁸ And because you give life to the body that is now fashioned in the womb and furnish it with members, what you have created is preserved amid fire and water, and for nine months the womb^[a] endures your creature that has been created in it.^{(A) 9} But that which keeps and that which is kept shall both be kept by your keeping. And when the womb gives up again what has been created in it, ¹⁰ you have commanded that from the members themselves (that is, from the breasts) milk, the fruit of the breasts, should be supplied,

³⁸ The calamities draw near and are not delayed. ³⁹ Just as a pregnant woman, in the ninth month when the time of her delivery draws near, has great pains around her womb for two or three hours beforehand, but when the child comes forth from the womb, there will not be a moment’s delay,^(A)