Psalm 114:3

The psalm opens with Israel going out of Egypt, and with God taking Judah as his sanctuary and Israel as his dominion (Psalm 114:1–2). Verse 3 follows at once with the sea’s reaction. The Hebrew says only that the sea saw, and the KJV supplies “it”. What the sea saw was the presence of the God of Israel among his people, and the psalm makes that plain when it asks the sea what ailed it and then calls the whole earth to tremble before the Lord (Psalm 114:5–8).

The verb for “saw”, râʼâh, is the ordinary word for seeing, and it can also mean to perceive what is seen. Given to the sea, it pictures the waters recognizing whose presence had come near. The sea “fled”, nûwç, the word for a hasty retreat, often out of fear. The waters drew back and stood aside, and Israel walked through on a dry path.

This is the crossing of the Red Sea, or Sea of Reeds, at the start of the journey around 1446 BC, told in Exodus 14. Moses records that “the LORD caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided” (Exodus 14:21), and the song Israel sang afterward says that “the floods stood upright as an heap” (Exodus 15:8). That night ended Israel’s bondage and marked them out as a people God had set apart for himself. It showed the LORD’s power over the gods of Egypt and over the sea itself, the great picture of chaos.

The second line of the verse moves forty years on, to Israel’s entry into Canaan under Joshua around 1406 BC, told in Joshua 3. The LORD said beforehand that when the priests bearing the ark stood in the river, “the waters of Jordan shall be cut off from the waters that come down from above; and they shall stand upon an heap” (Joshua 3:13). It happened just as he said. The waters coming down “stood and rose up upon an heap” (Joshua 3:16), and the people crossed into the land on dry ground.

“Driven back” translates çâbab, a verb meaning to turn about or go around, used here with the Hebrew word for “back”. Together they say that the river turned and went back, so its flow was held back and a path opened where there had been none. The Jordan was the last barrier between Israel and the land God had promised them, the land flowing with milk and honey, and he removed it as he had removed the sea.

So the two lines of verse 3 hold the whole journey between them. The sea opened the way out of bondage, and the Jordan opened the way into the inheritance. The lines say the same thing in different words, as Hebrew poetry often does, and together they show God faithful from the first step of his promise to the last. Israel kept remembering this pattern of deliverance, and Isaiah calls the LORD the one “which maketh a way in the sea, and a path in the mighty waters” (Isaiah 43:16).

Verse 4 turns from the water to the land. “Skipped” is râqaḏ, a verb whose root sense is to stamp, and so to spring about, wildly or for joy. The KJV renders it dance, jump, leap and skip in different places. The mountains, the most solid and lasting things anyone could point to, leap like animals.

They leap like rams. The word ʼayil has strength as its root sense, and besides a ram it can mean a leader or chief, a pillar or post, and a terebinth. A ram is a strong, heavy animal that still leaps and butts, so it suits the great mountains: massive, and yet set in motion by God. It takes power beyond imagining to make such things skip.

The “little hills” are compared with lambs, in Hebrew bên tsôʼn, “sons of the flock”. Bên is the word for son, and tsôʼn is a word for a flock of sheep or goats. Lambs are young and nimble, and their light springing fits the smaller hills. The two lines run side by side, mountains with hills and rams with lambs, and together they take in the whole landscape, from the highest peaks to the smallest rise. Among the nations round about, mountains stood for permanence and were sometimes held to be the homes of gods. Here they spring about like a flock in the field, because the true God has come near, and every part of the earth, however great or stable, moves before him.

Other Scriptures speak of the earth moving at God’s coming in the same way. The song in Judges says that “the mountains melted from before the LORD” (Judges 5:5), and another psalm says, “The earth shook, the heavens also dropped at the presence of God” (Psalm 68:8). “The earth saw, and trembled,” says Psalm 97:4, with the same picture of creation seeing God that verse 3 gives the sea. Habakkuk sees “the everlasting mountains” scattered and “the perpetual hills” bowing (Habakkuk 3:6), and Isaiah foretells the day when “every mountain and hill shall be made low” (Isaiah 40:4).

Psalm 114 belongs to the Hallel, the psalms of praise in Psalms 113–118, sometimes called the Egyptian Hallel, which Israel sang at Passover and the other great feasts. Year after year the people sang again of the sea that fled and the river that turned back. These crossings lived in Israel’s memory, worship and sense of who they were, and they kept before every generation God’s faithfulness to his covenant and his power over all that he made. They also taught Israel that the LORD alone is God. The nations around them bound up their gods with the forces of nature, and in this psalm those very forces run from the presence of Israel’s God.

The God who commanded the sea to flee is the same God made flesh in Jesus, the Word through whom all things were made (John 1:3). When Jesus rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace, be still,” there was a great calm, and his disciples asked one another, “What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (Mark 4:39–41). The waters that gave way to the LORD at the Red Sea gave way to his voice. The earth quaked when he died (Matthew 27:51). It quaked again on the morning of his resurrection (Matthew 28:2).

Jesus also leads a greater exodus. He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and he brings his people out of slavery to sin and death, across from death to life, toward the rest that remains for the people of God (Hebrews 4:9–11). Every barrier between God and us is overcome in him. The whole creation that now groans waits to be set free from its bondage to decay (Romans 8:21–22), and every knee will bow to Jesus and every tongue confess that he is Lord (Philippians 2:10–11). The leaping hills of this psalm look ahead to that day, when all creation rejoices before its King.

The God who moved the sea and the river is the God we trust today. Every sea of trouble and every Jordan in our path is small before him, and he is able to make a way where we can see none and bring us through to all he has promised. Our hope rests on his unchanging character and his power to act for his people.

If the mountains and hills move at his presence, how much more should we, who are made in his image, stand in awe of him, worship him and obey him. And as Israel sang these deeds at every Passover, we strengthen our faith by remembering what God has done, in Scripture and in our own lives, before we face what lies ahead.