Before she travailed, she brought forth
The new Israel
The predictive message of our prophet is now so far advanced that the future promised is at the door; the Church of the future is already like a child ripe for birth, and about to separate from the womb of Zion hitherto barren.
The God, who has already prepared everything so far, will suddenly make Zion a mother; a man-child, i.e a whole nation after Jehovah’s heart, will suddenly lie in her lap; and this new-born Israel, not the corrupt mass, will build Jehovah a Temple. (F. Delitzsch, D. D.)
The birth of the Gentile Church
It is perfectly sufficient to understand the parturition as a figure for the whole eventful crisis of the change of dispensations, and the consequent change in the condition of the Church. This indestructible ideal person, when she might have seemed to be reduced to nothing by the defection of the natural Israel, is vastly and suddenly augmented by the introduction of the Gentiles, a succession of events which is here most appropriately represented as the birth of a male child without the pains of child-birth. (J. A. Alexander.)
The birth of the Christian Church
The children born to Christ were so numerous, and so suddenly and easily produced, that they were rather like the dew from the morning’s womb than like the son from the mother’s womb (Psalm Exodus 3:1-22). (M. Henry.)