First, he takes, it seems, his own countrymen, the Jews, coming back
from Babylon into their own country after the seventy years'
captivity. They had been punished for their sins. But for what
purpose? That they might know (as Ezekiel said), that God was the
Lord. And when they cried unto him in their trouble, he delivered
them out of their distress.
Then he goes on to those who have brought themselves into poverty
and shame, and sit fast bound in misery and iron. It is their own
fault. They have brought it on themselves by rebelling against the
word of the Lord, and lightly regarding the counsel of the Most
Highest. But God does not hate them. God is not going to leave
them to the net which they have spread for their own feet. When
they cry unto the Lord in their troubles, he delivers them out of
their distress. God himself, by strange and unexpected ways, will
deliver them from their darkness of ignorance and sin, and from the
danger and misery which they have brought upon themselves.
Then he goes on to those who have injured their health by their own
folly, till their soul abhors all manner of food, and they are even
hard at death's door. Neither does God hate them. They, too, are
in God's school-house. And when they cry to the Lord in their
trouble, he will deliver them, too, out of their distress, and send
his word, and heal them, and save them from destruction.
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