TRAVAILING
TRAVAILING
Travailing (with child) is a symbol of great endeavours to bring something to pass, not without much difficulty, pain, and danger. And the compassing the end, which persons represented by this symbol aimed at, is a delivery of what they were big with, and a deliverance from the pain and danger they laboured under. Hence, the symbol of travailing with child is often used in the prophets to denote a state of anguish and misery; as in Isa 26:17-18; Isa 66:7; Jer 4:31; Jer 13:21; Jer 30:6-7; Mic 4:9-10. And so also in the New Testament, the pains of childbearing are used to signify the sorrow of tribulation or persecution; as in Mat 24:8; Mar 13:8; Joh 16:21-22; 1Th 5:3. And St. Paul applies the expression to the propagation of the Gospel through persecutions, Gal 4:19, “My little children of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you,” i.e. for whom I am concerned and in fear, till the Christian doctrine has overcome in you the habits of sin. And in Rom 8:22, he compares the earnest desire of the creation for the kingdom of Christ, to the pains of a woman in travail.
The same metaphor is not unusual in Pagan authors; and Tully hath it more than once.f1 It is likewise understood by the Persian and Egyptian Interpreters of affliction and cares, in ch. cxxvii.
On the other hand, the symbol of the birth betokens joy and deliverance; and especially if the child be a male; as in Joh 16:21. And in Isa 66:7, where the man-child is interpreted by the Targum of a king, a deliverer.
Agreeably to this Artemidorus, in L. i. c. 16, says, “Male children bring good success;” and in the preceding chapter his words are, “for a poor man, a debtor, and a slave, and any one that is in any bad circumstances whatsoever, to dream that he brings forth a child, signifies that he shall clear himself of all his grievances. And the reason is plain, because it is a deliverance from the pains, in which he was before, signified by the pregnancy.
Parturition also signifies the birth of a community, either ecclesiastical or civil, according as the tenor of the prophecy shall determine, Isa 66:8; Rev 12:2; Rev 12:5.
F1 M. T. C. pro. Muren. & Phil 2.