Micah 4:10

Be in pain, and labour to bring forth; it may be read, Thou shalt be in pain, and thou shalt labour, &c.; so it will be a prediction of the troubles, sorrows, and dangers that they shall meet with in the wars against the Babylonians, and in their captivity under them. O daughter of Zion; all the house of Judah, particularly you that dwell in Jerusalem and near Mount Zion. Like a woman in travail; whose sorrows are very sharp, but somewhat mitigated by expectation of a good delivery, and the birth of a living child: let your hopes so mitigate your sorrows too. For now; ere long, within a few years, you will see or hear that Israel is carried captive (which Micah lived to see): this may be an admonition, it is certainly a token that you shall be captives too; and this came upon them one hundred and thirty years after, when in Zedekiah's time the daughter of Zion was deplorably wasted, conquered, and captivated by Nebuchadnezzar. Thou shalt go forth out of the city; forced thereto by the prevailing power of the Babylonians, who took Zedekiah and those that accompanied him when they stole out of the city: these did go out when they could keep in it no longer. Thou shalt dwell in the field; as conquered, made prisoners, and held so in the fields under a strong guard, until all the conquered were brought together, that they might in one body be led away. In their journey to Babylon they were forced to lodge in the fields, also exposed to all the inconveniencies of heat in the day and of cold in the night, weary, hungry, thirsty, and faint near to death. Thou shalt go even to Babylon; O daughter of Zion, thou shalt certainly be carried captive to Babylon, where thy dwelling shall be little bettered, thou shalt dwell by the river, without the city. There shalt thou be delivered; by Cyrus first, and by Darius Hystaspes next, and by Artaxerxes in Nehemiah's time; all this as type of a greater deliverance. The Lord; the everlasting God, thy God, whose servants the Persian kings that favoured the Jews were, and by whose motion they did incline to release them. Shall redeem; the Hebrew word points out a redemption by the next kinsman, and so fairly minds us of the Messiah, the great Redeemer of the church. And to him, and the redemption of the church by him, do these deliverances ultimately and principally point. From the hand of thine enemies; who would have detained the people of God longer in slavery, or who would have hindered the rebuilding of the temple, and the re-establishment of the worship of God. Proportionably to this type doth the antitype answer, Luke 1:74,75.