Translations
F.O.G.MPrimary
F.O.G MessageFor he did not end my life before birth — so that my mother's womb would have been my tomb, forever holding what was never meant to live.
F.O.GSecondary
The F.O.GBecause he did not kill me in the womb, so that my mother would have been my grave, her womb forever great with child.
KJV
King James VersionBecause he slew me not from the womb; or that my mother might have been my grave, and her womb to be always great with me.
BSB
Berean Standard Biblebecause he did not kill me in the womb so that my mother might have been my grave, and her womb forever enlarged.
Footnotes
The phrase *harat olam* (הֲרַת עוֹלָם) literally means 'an eternal pregnancy' — a womb that perpetually bears but never delivers. The image is of death before birth: Jeremiah wishes he had never emerged. The word *rechem* (womb) here also carries its association with *rachamim* (compassion, mercy) — the same root; the womb of mercy becomes, in his fantasy, the womb of burial. The verse is among the most graphically despairing in all Scripture. FOG renders 'forever great with child' to preserve the grotesque literalism; FOG Message renders 'forever holding what was never meant to live' to draw out the theological weight of a life that, in Jeremiah's view, should not have begun.