“For a long time I have kept silent,
    I have been quiet and held myself back.
But now, like a woman in childbirth,
    I cry out, I gasp and pant.

Matthew Henry sees verses 14-16 (which we will come back to tomorrow), as picturing the deliverance of people from captivity to sin, even as it describes the literal return of the Jews from Babylon. Speaking about God, he says:

‘He shall cry, in the preaching of his word, cry like a travailing woman; for the ministers of Christ preached as men that travailed in birth again till they saw Christ formed in the souls of the people, Gal. iv.19.’