Ulangan 28:18

28:18 Your children ¹  will be cursed, as well as the produce of your soil, the calves of your herds, and the lambs of your flocks.

Yeremia 16:2-4

16:2 “Do not get married and do not have children here in this land. 16:3 For I, the Lord, tell you what will happen to ²  the children who are born here in this land and to the men and women who are their mothers and fathers. ³  16:4 They will die of deadly diseases. No one will mourn for them. They will not be buried. Their dead bodies will lie like manure spread on the ground. They will be killed in war or die of starvation. Their corpses will be food for the birds and wild animals.

Hosea 9:12-16

9:12 Even if they raise their children,

I will take away every last one of them. ⁴ 

Woe to them!

For I will turn away from them.

9:13 Just as lion cubs are born predators, ⁵ 

so Ephraim will bear his sons for slaughter.

9:14 Give them, O Lord –

what will you give them?

Give them wombs that miscarry,

and breasts that cannot nurse! ⁶ 

9:15 Because of all their evil in Gilgal,

I hate them there.

On account of their evil deeds,

I will drive them out of my land. ⁷ 

I will no longer love them;

all their rulers are rebels.

9:16 Ephraim will be struck down ⁸  –

their root will be dried up;

they will not yield any fruit.

Even if they do bear children,

I will kill their precious offspring.

Lukas 23:29-30

23:29 For this is certain: ⁹  The days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never bore children, and the breasts that never nursed!’ ¹⁰  23:30 Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ¹¹  ‘Fall on us!’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us!’ ¹² 

[28:18]  ¹ tn Heb “the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV).

[16:3]  ² tn Heb “For thus says the Lord concerning…”

[16:3]  ³ tn Heb “Thus says the Lord concerning the sons and daughters who are born in the place and concerning their mothers who give them birth and their fathers who fathered them in this land.”

[9:12]  ⁴ tn Heb “I will bereave them from a man”; NRSV “I will bereave them until no one is left.”

[9:13]  ⁵ tc The MT is corrupt in 9:13. The BHS editors suggest emending the text to follow the LXX reading. See D. Barthélemy, ed., Preliminary and Interim Report on the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project, 5:250-51.

[9:14]  ⁶ tn Heb “breasts that shrivel up dry”; cf. KJV, NAB, NASB, NRSV “dry breasts.”

[9:15]  ⁷ tn Heb “out of my house” (so NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV); TEV, NCV, NLT “my land.”

[9:16]  ⁸ tn Or perhaps, following the plant metaphor, “will be blighted” (NIV similar).

[23:29]  ⁹ tn Grk “For behold.”

[23:29]  ¹⁰ tn Grk “Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that have not borne, and the breasts that have not nursed!”

[23:29]  sn Normally barrenness is a sign of judgment, because birth would be seen as a sign of blessing. The reversal of imagery indicates that something was badly wrong.

[23:30]  ¹¹ sn The figure of crying out to the mountains ‘Fall on us!’ (appealing to creation itself to hide them from God’s wrath), means that a time will come when people will feel they are better off dead (Hos 10:8).

[23:30]  ¹² sn An allusion to Hos 10:8 (cf. Rev 6:16).