Psalms 114:2

"When Israel came out of Egypt, and the house of Jacob from among the strange people" [Psalm 114:1], "Judah was His sanctuary, and Israel His dominion" [Psalm 114:2]; "the sea saw that and fled, Jordan was driven back" [Psalm 114:3]. Think not that past deeds are related unto us, but rather that the future is predicted; since, while those miracles also were going on in that people, things present indeed were happening, but not without an intimation of things future....Some things he has related differently to what we have learned and read there: that he might not truly be thought to be repeating past acts rather than to be prophesying future things. For in the first place, we read not that the Jordan was driven back, but that it stood still on the side nearest the source of its streams, while the people were passing through; next, we read not of the mountains and hills skipping: all which he has added, and repeated. For after saying, "The sea saw that, and fled; Jordan was driven back:" he added, "The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like young sheep" [Psalm 114:4]: and then asks, "What ails you, O thou sea, that you fled, and thou, Jordan, that you were driven back?" [Psalm 114:5]. "You mountains, that you skipped like rams; and you little hills, like young sheep?" [Psalm 114:6].

He set up his sanctuary among them, in which he gave them the special tokens of his presence with them and promised to receive their homage and tribute. Happy are the people that have God's sanctuary among them (see Exod. xxv. 26 ), much more those that, like Judah here, are his sanctuaries, his living temples, on whom Holiness to the Lord is written.

Judah was his sanctuary,....

Judah was his sanctuary, and Israel his dominion. The pronoun "his" comes in where we should have looked for the name of God; but the poet is so full of thought concerning the Lord that he forgets to mention his name, like the spouse in the Song, who begins, "Let him kiss me, "or Magdalene when she cried, "Tell me where thou hast laid him."

Judah was his sanctuary, and Israel his dominion. The pronoun "his" comes in where we should have looked for the name of God; but the poet is so full of thought concerning the Lord that he forgets to mention his name, like the spouse in the Song, who begins, "Let him kiss me, "or Magdalene when she cried, "Tell me where thou hast laid him." From the mention of Judah and Israel certain critics have inferred that this Psalm must have been written after the division of the two kingdoms; but this is only another instance of the extremely slender basis upon which an hypothesis is often built up. Before the formation of the two kingdoms David had said, "Go number Israel and Judah, "and this was common parlance, for Uriah the Hittite said, "The ark, and Israel and Judah abide in tents"; so that nothing can be inferred from the use of the two names. No division into two kingdoms can have been intended here, for the poet is speaking of the coming out of Egypt when the people were so united that he has just before called them "the house of Jacob." It would be quite as fair to prove from the first verse that the Psalm was written when the people were in union as to prove from the second that its authorship dates from their separation. Judah was the tribe which led the way in the wilderness march, and it was foreseen in prophecy to be the royal tribe, hence its poetical mention in this place. The meaning of the passage is that the whole people at the coming out of Egypt were separated unto the Lord to be a peculiar people, a nation of priests whose motto should be, "Holiness unto the Lord." Judah was the Lord's "holy thing, "set apart for his special use. The nation was peculiarly Jehovah's dominion, for it was governed by a theocracy in which God alone was King. It was his domain in a sense in which the rest of the world was outside his kingdom.