Today’s Passage: Psalm 114
When Israel came out of Egypt, the sea fled before them and the Jordan turned back. What the psalm sings really happened. This is the Exodus itself, the true crossing of a true people, not a lovely nature poem set up to replace the event. And it calls the whole earth to tremble at His presence.
As you read, hold this: The sea observed and fled.
Psalm 114:1-2 (BSB)
¹ When Israel departed from Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of foreign tongue, ² Judah became God’s sanctuary, Israel His dominion.
They left Egypt, and something happened to them on the way out: Judah became His qodesh, pronounced KOH-desh. Strong's H6944, holiness, a holy thing, sacred and set apart. Here the word comes to rest on Judah itself, a whole nation made into His dwelling and paired with Israel as His dominion. They are His now, both sacred and under His rule. , and Israel became His dominion. His holy dwelling was now a people, not only a building.
Study notes A holy nation
Peter does not leave that pairing behind in Judah alone.
"But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light." 1 Peter 2:9 (BSB)
A holy nation, His own possession, a people He has called out of the darkness and into His light. The sea observed and fled.
Psalm 114:3-4 (BSB)
³ The sea observed and fled; the Jordan turned back; ⁴ the mountains skipped like rams, the hills like lambs.
The sea fled: that is the Red Sea, back in Exodus 14. The Jordan turned back: that is Joshua 3, decades later, as the people finally came into the land. Two crossings, and one God behind them both. The mountains skip not because the water has a mood of its own, but because He is there.
Context Two crossings
The sea stood at the start of the road, and the river at the end of it, and both of them truly happened. The psalm sings the two in a single breath because the same presence was behind them both.
Psalm 114:5-8 (BSB)
⁵ Why was it, O sea, that you fled, O Jordan, that you turned back, ⁶ O mountains, that you skipped like rams, O hills, like lambs? ⁷ Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob, ⁸ who turned the rock into a pool, the flint into a fountain of water!
Why did you flee, O sea? Because of His presence, the presence of the God of Jacob. He is the one who turned the rock into a pool and the flint into a fountain, water in the wilderness, and that stands on the record too. The sea observed and fled.