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Then they cried unto the Lord - When the Israelites began to pray heartily, and the eyes of all the tribes were as the eyes of one man turned unto the Lord, then he delivered them out of their distresses.
Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble - The language in this verse is repeated in this psalm in Psalm 107:13, Psalm 107:19, Psalm 107:28 - as if this were the main subject of the psalm, that when the people of God in different circumstances, or under various forms of trouble, call upon God, he hears them and delivers them.
And he delivered them out of their distresses - The verb from which the noun used here is derived has the idea of being “narrow, straitened, compressed.” Hence, the word comes to be used in the sense of distress of any kind - as if one were pressed down, or compressed painfully in a narrow space.
If the Hebrews had continued to obey God after they left Egypt, and had kept his righteous law, he would have gone before them and prospered them, and made them always a terror to the heathen nations around them. But they so often followed their own rebellious hearts, and departed from God, and went into idolatry, that he suffered them to be overcome by other nations, to humble and punish them. When in their affliction they cried unto God, he always heard them, and raised them up a ruler to deliver them from their enemies. They were so blinded they did not acknowledge that it was their sins which had caused God to depart from them, and leave them weak and a prey to their enemies, but they reasoned that it was because they had no one invested with kingly authority to command the armies of Israel. They had not kept in grateful remembrance the many instances God had given them of his care and great love, but often distrusted his goodness and mercy. 4aSG 66.1
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