The cry of the prisoner.
"The sighing of the prisoner." The prisoner here is not the man under the penalty of his crime. It is the captive placed under wearying limitations, not for personal faults, but as sharing the national disabilities. The case of such may be treated from three points of view. We have the sigh of the captive, the exile, and the oppressed.
I. THE SIGH OF THE CAPTIVE. The restraint of personal liberty is a most grievous distress. Man loves his freedom, and cannot endure bondage. There is the captivity of the body, but there is also a captivity of opinion, and a captivity of habits. When men are awakened, they begin to sigh under these bondages. "He is the free man whom the truth makes free, and all are slaves besides." Illustrate by the condition of captive Israel in Babylon. One psalmist pictures their distress in a very touching way (Psalms 137:1, Psalms 137:2), "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof." Not captives in the bodily or in the national sense, we may be captives to sin; then what is the sigh we breathe, and the cry we make, and into whose ears will our cry enter? There is One whose work concerns the "freeing of them that are bound." There is a trumpet voice which proclaims for all who sigh and cry in the prison house—
"The year of jubilee is come,
Return, ye ransomed sinners, home."
II. THE SIGH OF THE EXILE. Where patriot feeling is strong, it is an inconceivable distress to be away from one's own land. At least it is to be compelled to be away. We may leave home pleasantly at our own will; we never leave home pleasantly against our will. Illustrate by the passionate yearning of the Babylonian exiles for Jerusalem. "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning." See Daniel, the exile, praying with his window open toward Jerusalem. And yet here is a most strange and unnatural thing—so many souls are exiled by the compulsions of sin and self-will from their true home in God, and yet they neither sigh nor cry for their return. For all who do sigh there is a Divine Zerubbabel, ever ready to lead them back.
III. THE SIGH OF THE OPPRESSED. For the captive life in Babylon was a life of stern trials and hardships. There were even some "appointed to die," placed in peril of life. To whom should they cry in their time of sore need, save to the God of their fathers? Like Samson, blind and oppressed, they could find a way to God. And sin is an oppression and humiliation. They who live in sin find it, as the prodigal son did, a hard lot; and presently they cry for home and father and God, even as he did.—R.T.