Psalms 114:5

114:1-8 An exhortation to fear God. - Let us acknowledge God's power and goodness in what he did for Israel, applying it to that much greater work of wonder, our redemption by Christ; and encourage ourselves and others to trust in God in the greatest straits. When Christ comes for the salvation of his people , he redeems them from the power of sin and Satan, separates them from an ungodly world, forms them to be his people, and becomes their King. There is no sea, no Jordan, so deep, so broad, but, when God's time is come, it shall be divided and driven back. Apply this to the planting the Christian church in the world. What ailed Satan and his idolatries, that they trembled as they did? But especially apply it to the work of grace in the heart. What turns the stream in a regenerate soul? What affects the lusts and corruptions, that they fly back; that prejudices are removed, and the whole man becomes new? It is at the presence of God's Spirit. At the presence of the Lord, not only mountains, but the earth itself may well tremble, since it has lain under a curse for man's sin. As the Israelites were protected, so they were provided for by miracles; such was that fountain of waters into which the flinty rock was turned, and that rock was Christ. The Son of God, the Rock of ages, gave himself to death, to open a fountain to wash away sins, and to supply believers with waters of life and consolation; and they need not fear that any blessing is too great to expect from his love.

What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest?.... What was the matter with thee? what appeared to thee? what didst thou see? what didst thou feel, which caused thee to flee in such haste? Thou Jordan, that thou wast driven back? what is the meaning that thou didst not continue to flow as usual? what was it that stopped thy flowing tide? that cut off thy waters? that drove them back as fast or faster than they came?

Verses 5, 6. - What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou filledest thou Jordan, that thou wast driven back t. ye mountains, that ye skipped like rams; and ye little hills, like lambs ? Most poetically, the psalmist apostrophizes the sea, the Jordan, the mountains, and the lesser hills, inquiring of them for what reason they had forsaken their nature and done such strange things; or rather, addressing them as present, and as if the scenes were being enacted before his eyes, and asking why they are so strangely employed - what is causing the commotion and disturbance (see the Revised Version, where the present tense is used throughout the two verses). Psalm 114:5

5, 6 . The past becomes present to the poet’s mind, and he challenges Nature to explain its behaviour. The A.V. misses the vividness of the Hebrew tenses. Render: What aileth thee, thou sea, that thou fleest? Thou Jordan, that thou turnest back? Ye mountains, that ye skip like rams? Ye hills, like young sheep?

What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest?... - literally, "What to thee, O sea," etc. That is, What influenced thee - what alarmed thee - what put thee into such fear, and caused such consternation? Instead of stating the cause or reason why they were thus thrown into dismay, the psalmist uses the language of surprise, as if these inanimate objects had been smitten with sudden terror, and as if it were proper to ask an explanation from themselves in regard to conduct that seemed so strange.

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 takes the form of a triumphant mandate. The Lord, the God of Jacob, thus mighty in wondrous works, it is before whom the earth must tremble. אדון does not take the article because it finds its completion in the following יעקב (אלוהּ); it is the same epizeuxis as in Psalm 113:8 ; Psalm 94:3 ; Psalm 96:7 , Psalm 96:13 . ההפכי has the constructive ı̂ out of the genitival relation; and in למעינו in this relation we have the constructive ô, which as a rule occurs only in the genitival combination, with the exception of this passage and בּנו באר, Numbers 24:3 , Numbers 24:15 (not, however, in Proverbs 13:4 , "his, the sluggard's, soul"), found only in the name for wild animals חיתו־ארץ, which occurs frequently, and first of all in Genesis 1:24 .

The expression calls to mind Psalm 107:35 . הצּוּר is taken from Exodus 17:6 ; and חלּמישׁ (lxx τὴν ἀκρότομον, that which is rugged, abrupt) (Note: One usually compares Arab. chlnbûs, chalnabûs the Karaite lexicographer Abraham ben David writes חלמבוס]; but this obsolete word, as a compound from Arab. chls, to be black-grey, and Arab. chnbs, to be hard, may originally signify a hard black-grey stone, whereas חלמישׁ looks like a mingling of the verbal stems Arab. ḥms, to be hard, and Arab. ḥls, to be black-brown (as Arab. jlmûd, a detached block of rock, is of the verbal stems Arab. jld, to be hard, and Arab. jmd, to be massive). In Hauran the doors of the houses and the window-shutters are called Arab. ḥalasat when they consist of a massive slab of dolerite, probably from their blackish hue. Perhaps חלמישׁ is the ancient name for basalt; and in connection with the hardness of this form of rock, which resembles a mass of cast metal, the breaking through of springs is a great miracle. - Wetzstein. For other views vid., on Isaiah 49:21; Isaiah 50:7.) stands, according to Deuteronomy 8:15, poetically for סלע, Numbers 20:11, for it is these two histories of the giving of water to which the poet points back. But why to these in particular? The causing of water to gush forth out of the flinty rock is a practical proof of unlimited omnipotence and of the grace which converts death into life. Let the earth then tremble before the Lord, the God of Jacob.