Psalms 114:1-8
1 When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language;
2 Judah was his sanctuary, and Israel his dominion.
3 The sea saw it, and fled: Jordan was driven back.
4 The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs.
5 What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest? thou Jordan, that thou wast driven back?
6 Ye mountains, that ye skipped like rams; and ye little hills, like lambs?
7 Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob;
8 Which turned the rock into a standing water, the flint into a fountain of waters.
This is another hallelujah psalm, praising the Lord for deliverance from Egypt for calling the Hebrews to holiness for dividing the sea, and driving Jordan back for making the mountains skip like lambs and causing the earthquake and the rock to give streams of water.
Psalms 114:1. A people of strange language. The Egyptian language was so different from the Hebrew, that they could not understand one another. Joseph, speaking in the Egyptian to his brethren, did it by an interpreter. Genesis 42:23. Yet this language was easily acquired by their neighbours, and must therefore have had the same primitive words.
Psalms 114:8. Flint. The Hebrew is literally callous, or very hard rock. They had not the Gothic grouan, or granite, the real name of the rock.
REFLECTIONS.
This beautiful psalm is another specimen of the true sublime in Hebrew poetry: its apostrophes are original and striking. The author of Elements of Criticism was very much mistaken when he said, that no author had succeeded in sacred poetry. This may be true of poets who write on divine subjects with an unregenerate heart; but assuredly we have a version of this psalm equal to the original. “When Israel out of Egypt came.” See also Psalm 45. 73. 137.
From the doctrine of this psalm we learn, that if God removed all the difficulties out of Israel's way in their exodus from Egypt, he will remove all the difficulties out of the way of his church in her pilgrimage to heaven. He will shake the mountains, and make the stoutest rebels tremble. The noisy and rebellious nations shall fear, and fly back as the sea. He will fix his presence in his Zion, and give her water from the flinty rock. Yea, Christ the true rock, smitten on Calvary, pours life and salvation on his saints. Boast then, oh believer, boast against thy foes. They shall all fly back at the name and presence of thy God, whose grandeur is here disclosed for thy admiration and encouragement.