Psalm 114
8 verses · BSBPsalms book hub →
Speaks with:Habakkuk 3×2Exodus 12×1Exodus 13×1Genesis 42×1Exodus 15×1Exodus 25×1
Summary
Chapter summary
The exodus in eight electric verses. 'When Israel went forth out of Egypt… Judah became his sanctuary, Israel his dominion.' The sea saw it, and fled; the Jordan was driven back; 'the mountains skipped like rams, the little hills like lambs.' Then the question that has no answer but God: 'What aileth thee, O thou sea, that thou fleest?' 'Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord… who turned the rock into a pool of water, the flint into a fountain of waters.'
Context
Poetry · David, Asaph, Sons of Korah, others — Psalms overview
The world behind this chapter
Psalms 114The history
This is the exodus in eight short verses, sung immediately before the Passover meal. The family had lamb, bitter herbs, and unleavened bread in front of them; the song told them what those things were about.
It names four events without explaining any of them, because it did not need to. The sea drew back at the crossing. The Jordan ran backward when the nation entered the land forty years later. The mountains shook at Sinai. And water came out of solid rock in the desert. Four moments, two at the start of the journey and two at the end.
The picture of hills skipping like lambs came from watching flocks. Anyone who had kept sheep had seen young rams break into a stiff-legged jump for no reason at all, and the poet gives that motion to the mountains.
The rock in the last line is flint — the hard, glassy stone of the Sinai hills that a man used to make a blade. Turning that into a pool of standing water was the most unlikely thing in the singer's landscape.
What it meant to them
The point is in what the psalm refuses to say. It never names God until it has already described creation running away from him, and then it asks the sea directly what its problem was.
For families under Persian, Greek, or Roman rule centuries later, singing this at the table was a yearly reminder that the empire in charge was not the last word. Judah had become his sanctuary once; it could again.
Sources cited
- The Mishnah, tractate Pesahim (Danby translation)
- Keil and Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament , Psalms
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Psalms 114. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.