He said, ‘Surely they are my people,
    children who will be true to me’;
    and so he became their Saviour.
9 In all their distress he too was distressed,
    and the angel of his presence saved them.

What encouraging words!

Perhaps we don’t understand why we (or other believers, for that matter) go through the things we do. But in all our suffering the Lord does not stand aloof. He is not looking on remotely from some safe, sheltered space. Rather, He is always with us in our trials.

God’s personal involvement is also intimated in the alternative rendering of verse 8b/9a:

”…and so He became their Saviour 9 in their distress. / It was no envoy or angel / but his own presence that saved them.”

‘…thus far he sympathizes with them, that he takes what injury is done to them as done to himself and will reckon for it accordingly. Their cries move him (Exod 3 7), and he appears for them as vigorously as if he were pained in their pain. Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? This is matter of great comfort to God’s people in their affliction that God is so far from afflicting willingly (Lam 3 33) that, if they humble themselves under his hand, he is afflicted in their affliction, as the tender parents are in the severe operations which the case of a sick child calls for.’ Matthew Henry.