She was with child, and she cried out in her birth-pangs, in anguish for delivery. Yet Isaiah says about her, “before the woman in labor gives birth, and before the toil of labor begins, she fled and brought forth a male child.(Is. 66:7)” Gregory also, in the 13th chapter of his interpretation of the Song of Songs talks about of the Lord “whose conception is without intercourse, and whose birth is undefiled.(Gregory of Nyssa, Homilia in Canticum Canticorum 13)” So the birth was free from pain. Therefore, if, according to such a great prophet and the teacher of the church, the Virgin has escaped the pain of childbirth, how does she here cry out in her birth-pang, in anguish for delivery? Does not this contradict what is said? Certainly not. For nothing could be contradictory in the mouth of the one and the same Spirit, who spoke through both. But in the present passage you should understand the crying out and being in anguish in the way: until the divine angel told Joseph about her, that the conception was from the Holy Spirit, the Virgin was naturally despondent, blushing before her betrothed, and thinking that he might somehow suspect that she was in labor from a furtive marriage. Her despondency and grief he called, according to the principles of metaphor, crying and anguish; and this is not surprising. For even when blessed Moses spiritually met God and was losing heart- for he saw Israel in the desert being encircled by the sea and by enemies- God said to him, “Why do you cry to me?(Ex. 14:15) So also now the vision calls the sorrowful disposition of the Virgin’s mind and heart “crying out.” Oecumenius Commentary on Revelation]
