Psalms 107:10 - Meaning and Application

We should notice God’s goodness toward prisoners and captives. Their condition is described as sitting in darkness, in deep prison cells that cut them off from others and fill them with loneliness and sorrow (Psalm 107:10). They sit in the shadow of death, which means more than pain and fear, it also points to great danger. Prisoners were often under sentence of death, so they sat in despair, yet tried to make the best of their situation. They were bound in suffering, and often in iron, as Joseph was.

This is a severe misery, and it should make us value freedom and be thankful for it. The cause of this trouble is given next, in verse 11. It came because they rebelled against the words of God. Willful sin is rebellion against God’s words, because it goes against his truth and breaks his law. They despised the counsel of the Most High, as if they did not need it and could not gain anything from it. Those who refuse to be advised cannot be helped. Those who ignore preaching, reject the warnings of their own conscience, or brush aside the fair correction of friends, despise the counsel of the Most High. For that reason, they are bound in affliction, both as punishment and as a way to turn them back from rebellion.

The purpose of this suffering was to humble them, to bring down their pride and make them low in their own eyes (Psalm 107:12). Affliction should be used as a humbling mercy. If our hearts stay proud, hard, and unchanged under trouble, we lose the benefit of it and resist God’s purpose. If a person’s estate is reduced by hard labor, or their honor is brought low, and those who once lifted themselves up have fallen with no one to help, let that teach them to confess sin, accept the discipline for it, and humbly ask for mercy and grace.

The duty of people in this condition is to pray (Psalm 107:13). Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, even if they had ignored him before. Prisoners often have time to pray, when they had no time for it in freedom. Trouble makes people cry out, but grace leads them to cry out to the Lord, who sent the affliction and is the only one who can remove it.

Their deliverance is also described: they cried to the Lord, and he saved them (Psalm 107:13). He brought them out of darkness into light, a light that was welcome and doubly sweet after such misery. He brought them out of the shadow of death into the comfort of life, so that their freedom was like life from the dead (Psalm 107:14). If they were chained, he broke their bonds. If they were shut up in strong prisons, he broke the gates of bronze and the bars of iron that held them fast. When God chooses to save, the greatest barriers become nothing.

Gates of bronze and bars of iron cannot keep God out from his people, for he was with Joseph in prison. They also cannot keep his people in when the appointed time for their release comes. Those whose bonds God has loosed should give him thanks for his goodness, and use their own experience to praise him. His goodness fills the earth, the world, and all who live in it.