Psalms 18:15

Then the channels of water were seen— This is a description of the effects of the earthquake, by which the earth was riven or rent in sunder, and such clefts made in it, that the subterraneous passages of the waters were discovered by the eruption of vast quantities of water proceeding from the breaches of it, as have frequently been the effects of violent earthquakes. In that great one which happened at Jamaica in the year 1692, in some places out of the clefts issued forth whole rivers of water, spouting up a great height into the air, which seemed to threaten a deluge even twelve miles from the sea; in others, there were formed new lakes of water covering a thousand acres. Many other instances of the like sort might be mentioned. These dreadful eruptions of water may well be called the channels, or rather torrents of water, or of the sea, which discovered themselves as the effect of the earthquake. The Psalmist adds, The foundations of the world were discovered; i.e. such large and deep chasms, or apertures, were made by the violence of the shock, that one might almost see the very foundations; or, as Jonah calls them, the bottoms, or rather the extremities of the mountains, in the bottom of the sea. These may be well called the foundations of the world, as their bases run deep into the earth, and thereby add greatly to the security and stability of it. Chandler. Dr. Delaney, in his first volume, b. i. c. 11. of his Life of David, has made a judicious and pleasing comparison between this description, and a fine passage of much the same kind in the first Georgic of Virgil, to which we must refer the reader.