(17) Like as a woman with child.--This, as in Matthew 24:8, John 16:21, comes as the most natural image of longing, painful expectation, followed by great joy.

Verse 17. - Like as a woman with child (comp. Isaiah 13:8; Isaiah 21:3). Isaiah uses the metaphor to express any severe pain combined with anxiety. So have we been in thy sight; rather, so have we been at thy presence. When thou wert visiting us in anger, and laying thy chastisements upon us.

26:12-19 Every creature, every business, any way serviceable to our comfort, God makes to be so; he makes that work for us which seemed to make against us. They had been slaves of sin and Satan; but by the Divine grace they were taught to look to be set free from all former masters. The cause opposed to God and his kingdom will sink at last. See our need of afflictions. Before, prayer came drop by drop; now they pour it out, it comes now like water from a fountain. Afflictions bring us to secret prayer. Consider Christ as the Speaker addressing his church. His resurrection from the dead was an earnest of all the deliverance foretold. The power of his grace, like the dew or rain, which causes the herbs that seem dead to revive, would raise his church from the lowest state. But we may refer to the resurrection of the dead, especially of those united to Christ.Like as a woman with child,.... By this simile are set forth the great distresses and afflictions the church of Christ will be in, before redemption and deliverance from the antichristian yoke comes:

that draweth near the time of her delivery; when her burden is great and very troublesome:

is in pain, and crieth out in her pangs; for her friends to come about her, and give her all the help and assistance they can:

so have we been in thy sight, O Lord; in great distress and trouble, and crying to him for salvation and deliverance, all which were well known unto him.