"... Jewett points out that Paul’s maternal personification of creation may have been influenced by Roman depictions of Mother Earth—for example, on the Ara Pacis in Rome—although he contrasts her relaxed posture there with the mood of “eager expectation” (ἀποκαραδοκία) that Paul attributes to creation (8:19). He also mentions as parallel the personification of the earth in the Book of the Watchers, where the earth cries out to heaven on behalf of her inhabitants, who are being devoured by the giants (1 Enoch 7:6, 9:2). Joseph R. Dodson compares the personification of creation in Romans with that in the Wisdom of Solomon, but he finds that the personified creation behaves in quite different ways in the two works. These comparisons are helpful, but much more illuminating parallels can be found in 4 Ezra. Some of the aforementioned analogies by which Uriel explains eschatological matters to Ezra compare the earth to a pregnant woman. For example, in response to a question from Ezra about a possible delay of the final judgment, Uriel answers, “Go and ask a woman who is with child if, when her nine months have been completed, her womb can keep the child within her any longer” (4:40). After Ezra answers that it cannot, Uriel draws out the analogy: “The underworld and the treasuries of the souls are like the womb. For just as a woman who is in travail makes haste to escape the pangs of birth, so also do these [places] hasten to give back those things that were committed to them from the beginning” (4:41–42; compare 1 Enoch 51:1; 2 Baruch 30:2, 50:2) ..."