This verse is parallel to the previous one. The idea behind both Woe Oracles and their accompanying questions concerns the folly of thinking that someone can question God’s plans. In this context it refers to his plan to use the Persian ruler Cyrus as his agent to bring his people back to Jerusalem.

Woe to him who says to a father, ‘What are you begetting?’ or to a woman, ‘With what are you in travail?’: In the same way that clay cannot question the potter that uses it, so a child about to be born cannot ask his parents what they are doing in creating new life. To express this clearly it is better to render a father and a woman as “his father” and “his mother” (New International Version, Revised English Bible)

What are you begetting? is literally “What are you causing to be born?” This refers to a child in the process of being born or being conceived. New International Version uses the perfect tense, saying “What have you begotten?” This implies the child is already born, asking his father what he has done (similarly Good News Translation). It is better to point to a child about to be born or conceived here.

Or to a woman, ‘With what are you in travail?’ is parallel to the previous line. A woman refers to the woman who is in childbirth, that is, the mother of the child about to be born. The Hebrew verb rendered are … in travail refers to the painful process of childbirth (see the comments on 26.17, where it is translated “writhes”).

Good News Translation combines the two lines of this verse. It also changes the Woe Oracle into a rhetorical question, as it did with the previous one. Translators may prefer to stay closer to the original text.

Translation examples for this verse are:

• Woe [or, Doom] to the person who says to his father, “What are you conceiving?”
or to his mother, “With what are you in labor?”

• Woe to anyone who thinks he can ask his father, “What are you bringing to birth?”
or ask his mother, “What are you bringing to birth in pain?”

• Woe to someone who asks his father what he is conceiving,
or who asks his mother about what her labor is producing.

Quoted with permission from Ogden, Graham S. and Sterk, Jan. A Handbook on Isaiah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2011. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .