‘And she was with child and cries out, travailing in birth and in pain to be delivered.'
This description of Israel in birth pains comes from Isaiah 66:8; Micah 4:9-10. God has destined his people to suffer in carrying forward the history of salvation. He has chosen them as His means of salvation, but it was to be through much tribulation and anguish that it would be accomplished. The seed of the woman will smite the Serpent's head, but He will be born through the woman's travail (Genesis 3:15-16).
She ‘cries out' to God for His deliverance to be revealed. For the aspirations of Israel see Luke 1:46-55; Luke 1:68-79; Luke 2:29-32. Their longing is for deliverance and the ‘birth' of themselves as a new nation and part of this longing is for the birth of the Messiah through whom the nation will achieve its calling. The idea of the birth pangs for the Messiah, based on these passages in Isaiah and Micah, was familiar in contemporary literature.