The second picture of spiritual experience in this psalm is that of deliverance from imprisonment because of rebellion against the Lord and his word. Those who were delivered found themselves in a very dark dungeon, with the shadow of death hanging over them, and no prospect of escaping. Indeed, their confinement only became worse as they realised that their imprisonment included the prospect of ongoing hard labour, without anyone coming to their aid after they collapsed from the unending demands made on them. Or so it seemed.
Why were they in prison? Because they had rebelled against God. Why did they suffer hard labour? Because the One who had imprisoned them wanted them to cry to him for help. What is meant by the dark dungeon and the hard labour? The dungeon pictures the enslavement of sin that people find themselves in, and the hard labour describes the pointless, monotonous experiences that sinners engage in day after day, all of which don’t bring them an inch closer to deliverance from their chains.
What was the remedy? The remedy was for them to cry to the One who imprisoned them and to ask him for mercy. They could, as it were, sing the sad song:
I tried the broken cisterns, Lord, But, ah, the waters failed! E’en as I stooped to drink they fled, And mocked me as I wailed.
What happened when they did? He set them free and brought them into the bright liberty of salvation. They tasted that the Lord was gracious and experience his power in his deliverance of their souls from spiritual bondage. The freedom that they received was not a kind of half-deliverance. Rather they were taken out of the cell, and its doors and bars were shattered by him so that they could never be used again against the prisoner that he had set free.
What should they do? They are to engage in praise of the Lord, especially for the way that he revealed his love to them. Moreover they can rejoice in realising that the deliverance that they had known was also being experienced by others. After all, the Lord’s prisoners are eventually set free by him when they are led by him to confess their sins to him.
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