Exodus 19:3-4

I bare you on eagles’ wings.

Borne on eagles’ wings

God here employs a similitude denoting the speed, the security and the tender care with which they were, as it were, transported from the house of bondage, and which is expanded in fuller significancy (Deuteronomy 32:11). Here is a figurative illustration of an important work. We may apply it to three things in the history of the Christian.

1. To the period of conversion. Then God bears sinners on eagles’ wings and brings them to Himself. He stirs up the nest of self-righteousness and carnal security; flutters over them, excites and teaches them to fly towards heaven in their desires and affections.

2. It will also apply to the season of deliverance, and is descriptive of the speed with which God comes to the help of His people, and the security He effects; for the eagle is not only a swift, but a powerful bird.

3. It will apply to their final happiness. He will bear His people on eagles’ wings to heaven. It may be He may bear them through many a dark and trying scene, but they shall be brought to glory at last. (A. Nevin, D. D.)

God’s deliverances

There is great beauty and truth in this expression, and it well displays all that God had done for this enslaved people. The eagle is the most powerful of the birds of prey of the ancient world; it is the most rapid in its flight, the highest and most majestic in its aerial courses, and, at the same time, one of the most tender towards its young. These four qualities of the eagle admirably depict--

1. The power with which God had delivered Israel, destroying for them the most formidable nations, raising tempests in the heavens, and the waves of the sea, opening its abyss, and, as it is elsewhere expressed, saving them “through a mighty hand, and by a stretched-out arm.”

2. The astonishing quickness of this deliverance: fifty days had scarcely elapsed since this multitude were slaves on the borders of the Nile employed in making bricks, under the lash of the task-masters; and lo! they were all gathered together at the foot of the mountains of Arabia, having passed, like an eagle, over deserts and seas.

3. The majesty which God had displayed in His intervention. As the eagle which, bearing its young upon its back, flies not near the earth, nor from tree to tree like other birds, but soars majestically at the height of the clouds, see with what brilliant grandeur God had delivered Israel: the Nile is turned into blood, the sun darkened, darkness covers the land for three days, thunder and hailstones rend the heavens, the Destroying Angel passes over Egypt in the terrible night of the death of its firstborn, the pillar of the cloud by day, and the pillar of fire by night goes before the camp of Israel, the voice of God is heard with power from the heights of heaven.

4. The tender care of the eagle for its cherished young presents to us a touching figure of the conduct of God towards Israel. The eagle broods over its young in its nest in the crevice of some rock, it cherishes them, it nourishes them, it carries them upon its wings, it deposits them tenderly, in such places as it deems good for them, and soon teaches them to fly alone in the sky. Well, such had been the conduct of God towards His people. Read what God Himself says about it in Deuteronomy 32:7. (Prof. Gaussen.)

And brought you unto Myself

The Israelites had, on the one side, by the Egyptian servitude; on the other, by the Egyptian idolatry, with which they had contaminated themselves, swerved far from God, His purity and sanctity--in a word, from truth and genuine faith; now God, in graciously granting them His revelation and His pure doctrines, brings them again back to Himself; He intends to make them “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (M. M. Kalisch, Ph. D.)