Gr. ōdines, “birth pangs,” “birth pains,” “labor pains,” “travail.” The same word is translated “travail” in 1 Thess. 5:3; the verb form appears in Gal. 4:19, 27; Rev. 12:2. Metaphorically the word denotes pains in a more general sense (see Acts 2:24).

 The Jews used a term (Heb. cheblo shel mashiach; Aramaic chebleh dimeshiach, literally, “the pang of the Messiah”); once in a disputed passage in the plural, “the pangs of the Messiah”) by which they designated, not the sufferings of the Messiah Himself, but the calamities out of which the Messianic age would be born. The expression is found as early as about A.D. 90 in a saying of Rabbi Eliezer (Midrash Mekhiltha 59a, on Ex. 16:29, cited in Strack and Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament, vol. 1, p. 950), and was possibly already current in the time of Jesus. If so, Jesus’ use of the term would call to mind these predicted calamities. For a description of conditions that the non-canonical, apocalyptic writers expected would precede the end of the age see 2 Esdras 5:1-12; 6:18-25; 15:16; Apocalypse of Baruch 27; 48:31-37; 70:2-10; Book of Jubilees 23:16-25; Book of Enoch 99:4-7; 100:1-6.

 See on vs. 6, 7.