Behold, I am pressed under you - God bore His people, as the wain bears the sheaves. “Ye yourselves have seen,” He said to them by Moses, “how I bare you on eagle’s wings, and brought you unto Myself” Exodus 19:4. “Thou hast seen how the Lord thy God bare thee, as a man doth bear his son, in all the way that ye went, until ye came into this place” Deuteronomy 1:31. And by Isaiah, “He bare them and carried them all the days of old” Isaiah 63:9; and, “which are born” by Me “from the belly, which are carried from the womb” Isaiah 46:3. Now, He speaks of Himself as wearied by them, as by Isaiah, “thou hast wearied Me with thine iniquities” Isaiah 43:24; and by Malachi, “ye have wearied the Lord: yet ye say, where with have we wearied Him?” Malachi 2:17. His long-suffering was, as it were, worn out by them. He was straitened under them, as the wain groans under the sheaves with which it is over-full. The words are literally, “Behold I, I” (emphatic I, your God, of whom it would seem impossible) “straiten myself” (that is, of My own Will allow Myself to be straitened“under you” ,
“As the wain full for itself,” that is, as full as ever it can contain, is “straitened, groans,” as we say. God says, (the word in Hebrew is half active) that He allows Himself to be straitened, as in Isaiah, He says, “I am weary to bear,” literally, “I let Myself be wearied.” We are simply passive under weariness or oppressiveness: God endures us, out of His own free condescension in enduring us. But it follows, that when He shall cease to endure our many and grievous sins, He will cast them and the sinner forth from Him.