(I) Of love (Hosea 11:4), parallel to "cords of a man," not such as oxen are led by, but humane methods, as a father draws his child by leading strings, "teaching him to go (Hosea 11:1).
        (II) Christ's "bands" (Psalm 2:3), an "easy yoke" to the regenerate, seem galling chains to the natural man, and he strives to "break them asunder."
        (III) Christ's body, the church, ' by bands," i.e. sinews and nerves binding limb to limb, "having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God" (Colossians 2:19). Faith, love, and peace are the spiritual "bands" (Colossians 2:2; Colossians 3:14; Ephesians 4:3).
        (IV) The bands tying the yoke to the neck of a beast of burden is the image of the captivity in which Jerusalem and Israel have been held, and from which Christ shall free them at His glorious coming (Ezekiel 34:27; Isaiah 28:22; Isaiah 52:2); also the captivity to Satan of the spiritual Israel, from which Christ releases us.
        (V) "Bands" means, in Zechariah 11:7, the bond of brotherhood which originally hound together Judah and Jerusalem, severed because of their unfaithfulness to the covenant, but to be restored everlastingly when they shall turn to Messiah (Ezekiel 37:15-28), and when Messiah "shall make them one nation upon the mountains of Israel."
        (VI) "There are no bands in their death" (Psalm 73:4); i.e., the prosperous wicked, thought the psalmist in a desponding fit of unbelief for a time, have no pains enchaining them in their dying hour; passion and impatience here lost sight of the real death-bringing pains hanging over the wicked (Job 21:17; Psalm 11:6).