… he bears us in himself with compassionate love.
The Hebrew text of the Old Testament does not draw on psychology to speak about God’s compassionate suffering with man. Rather, in accordance with the concreteness of Semitic thought, it designates it with a word whose basic meaning refers to a bodily organ, namely, rahamim. Taken in the singular, rahamim means the mother’s womb. Just as “heart” stands for feeling, and “loins” and “kidneys” stand for desire and pain, the womb becomes the term for being with another; it becomes the deepest reference to man’s capacity to stand for another, to take the other into himself, to suffer him [erleiden], and in this long-suffering to give him life. The Old Testament, with a word taken from the language of the body, tells us how God shelters us in himself, how he bears us in himself with compassionate love.
Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal (2009-07-13). Credo for Today: What Christians Believe (p. 69). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.