Psalms

Psalms 114

8 verses · Wisdom · Old Testament

1When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of foreign language, 2Judah became his sanctuary, Israel his dominion. 3The sea saw it, and fled. The Jordan was driven back. 4The mountains skipped like rams, the little hills like lambs. 5What was it, you sea, that you fled? You Jordan, that you turned back? 6You mountains, that you skipped like rams; you little hills, like lambs? 7Tremble, you earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob, 8who turned the rock into a pool of water, the flint into a spring of waters.

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3 commentators · 11 notes on this chapter

Matthew HenryEnglish Puritan / Nonconformist · 1708–17141

Writes as a pastor rather than a critic. Expect devotional and practical application over historical or linguistic analysis, read through a Reformed covenantal frame — and expect the Old Testament to be read forward toward Christ throughout.

Why this voice is here: The most widely read English commentary for three centuries. Included as a baseline: where Henry and a modern voice diverge, the divergence itself is usually the interesting part.

v. 1–8

The psalmist is here remembering the days of old, the years of the right hand of the Most High, and the wonders which their fathers told them of (Jdg 6:13), for time, as it does not wear out the guilt of sin, so it should not wear out the sense of mercy. Let…

John GillParticular Baptist / High Calvinist · 1746–17638

The most exhaustive and the most doctrinally committed here. Expect high — even supralapsarian — Calvinism applied consistently, and unusually heavy use of rabbinic and Talmudic sources for Jewish context. Where a passage bears on election or the will, Gill will read it in one direction, and knowing that in advance is the point.

Why this voice is here: The strongest Calvinist reading available in the public domain, and the best on Jewish background. Read alongside Clarke, not instead of him — between them you get both sides of the argument.

v. 1

When Israel went out of Egypt,.... The people of Israel in a body, publicly, openly, and not by stealth; freely and willingly, not forced and drove out; though urged by the Egyptians to go, through the hand of God upon them; and so went out with the mighty…

v. 2

Judah was his sanctuary,.... Meaning not the tribe of Judah only, though that in many things had the preeminence; the kingdom belonging to it, the chief ruler being out of it, especially the Messiah; its standard was pitched and moved first; it offered first…

v. 3

The sea saw it, and fled,.... When the Word of the Lord appeared at it, as the Targum in the king's Bible; the Red sea, to which the Israelites came when they went out of Egypt; this saw that Judah was the Lord's holy and peculiar people, and that Israel were…

Keil & DelitzschGerman Lutheran, conservative-critical · 1861–18752

The technical one, and Old Testament only. Expect Hebrew grammar, textual argument, and direct engagement with nineteenth-century critical scholarship — closer to a scholarly apparatus than a devotional read. Where a modern critic claims a text is late or composite, this is where the conservative counter-argument was made.

Why this voice is here: Old Testament only, and heavy going — but the place to look when someone asserts a passage cannot mean what it appears to.

v. 1–4

Egypt is called עם לעז (from לעז, cogn. לעג, לעה), because the people spoke a language unintelligible to Israel (Psa 81:6), and as it were a stammering language. The lxx, and just so the Targum, renders ἐκ λαοῦ βαρβάρου (from the Sanscrit barbaras, just as…

v. 5–8

The poet, when he asks, "What aileth thee, O sea, that thou fleest...?" lives and moves in this olden time as a contemporary, or the present and the olden time as it were flow together to his mind; hence the answer he himself gives to the question propounded…

World English Bible — Public domain