Psalms 107:16

MY anxious, prayerful desire this morning is that some who have been in the condition described in the text may come out of it into full redemption. They have been too long in prison and now the silver trumpet sounds—liberty to the captives! Jesus has come into the world to break the gate of brass and to cut the bars of iron in two. Oh, that my prayer might be heard for those who are in bondage! I trust that some of those who are now immured in the dungeon of despondency will say, "Amen," to my prayer and, if they are praying inside and we are praying outside—and the Lord Jesus Christ, Himself, comes to open the prison doors, then there will be a Jubilee before long. This passage, of course, literally alludes to prisoners held in durance by their fellow men. What a sad world man has made of this earth! With superfluity of evil, man has multiplied his Bastilles! As if there were not misery enough to the free, he invents cells and chains! One's blood boils when standing in those living graves in which tyrants have buried their victims out of sight and hearing! Could the most fierce of wild beasts display such cruelty to their kind as men have shown to men? By the horrors of such imprisonments, one must estimate the joy of being set free. To God it is a glory that, in the order of His Providence, He often provides a way of escape for the oppressed. Cruel dynasties have been overthrown, tyrants have been hurled from their thrones and then enlargement has come to those who were shut up. Liberated ones should, indeed, "praise the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men." But the various scenes in this Psalm were intended to describe spiritual conditions.

MY anxious, prayerful desire this morning is that some who have been in the condition described in the text may come out of it into full redemption. They have been too long in prison and now the silver trumpet sounds—liberty to the captives! Jesus has come into the world to break the gate of brass and to cut the bars of iron in two. Oh, that my prayer might be heard for those who are in bondage!

For he hath broken - This is the reason given for thanks to God for his deliverance of the captives. It was not a simple deliverance; it was done so as to manifest the irresistible power of God. He tore the prison in pieces, and cut the bars of iron asunder.

For he hath broken the gates of brass - The immediate “reason” here given for praising the Lord is that he had “broken the gates of brass,” continuing the thought from Psa 107:10-14. In the previous part of the psalm, in giving a reason for praising the Lord, the fact that he feeds the hungry was selected Psa 107:9 because in the preceding part the allusion was to the sufferings of hunger and thirst Psa 107:4-5; here the fact that he had broken the gates of brass is selected, because the allusion in the immediately preceding verses Psa 107:12-14 was to their imprisonment. In the construction of the psalm there is great regularity. The “gates of brass” refer probably to Babylon; and the idea is, that their deliverance had been as if the brass gates of that great city had been broken down to give them free egress from their captivity. Thus the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus is announced in similar language: “I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron,” Isa 45:2. See the notes at that passage.