Bible Commentaries
Psalms 114

Verses 1-8

A majestic song celebrating the care of God for His people at the time of the exodus from Egypt, when all the powers of nature were called to contribute for their benefit.

v. 1. When Israel, God's chosen people, who had accepted the true God as their King, went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob, which had entered Egypt as a family and left it as a nation, from a people of strange language, that is, unintelligible, foreign, Hebrew being considered the sacred language,

v. 2. Judah, the tribe which assumed the leadership and to whose tribe the capital was reckoned after the time of David, was His Sanctuary and Israel, the entire nation, as His Church, His dominion, His rule over them being acknowledged by all the true Israelites, Exodus 6, 7.

v. 3. The sea saw it and fled, the Red sea opening up before the people, Exodus 14:21; Jordan was driven back, Joshua 3:13-16;

v. 4. the mountains skipped like rams and the little hills like lambs, the reference being to the quaking of Mount Sinai and the surrounding country at the time of the giving of the Law.

v. 5. What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest? thou Jordan, that thou wast driven back? the reference being to the two events that marked the beginning and the end of the wilderness journey.

v. 6. Ye mountains, that ye skipped like rams? and ye little hills, like lambs? Why should all nature be in a turmoil with so many manifestations of His divine power?

v. 7. Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord, that being the explanation of the agitation in nature at various times during the wilderness journey, at the presence of the God of Jacob,

v. 8. which turned the rock into a standing water, on the two occasions when Moses, at the command of God, smote the rock and water gushed forth, the flint into a fountain of waters, Exodus 17:6; Numbers 20:11. It is a source of great comfort to New Testament believers to know that the spiritual Rock on whom the children of Israel depended was Christ. 1 Corinthians 10:4-9.