"When Israel went out from Egypt,
the house of Jacob from a people of strange language,
2 Judah became his sanctuary,
Israel his dominion.
3 The sea looked and fled;
Jordan turned back.
4 The mountains skipped like rams,
the hills like lambs.
5 What ails you, O sea, that you flee?
O Jordan, that you turn back?
6 O mountains, that you skip 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 turns the rock into a pool of water,
the flint into a spring of water."
Psalm 114
This, the second of the Hallel Psalms, is the only one of the series which speaks directly of the Exodus, and it certainly gains in significance when it is remembered that our Lord and His disciples sang it at the time of the Passover (Matthew 26:30), when another and greater Exodus was about to be accomplished. That is the first consideration in a study of this Psalm; the second is to recall to whom these words were probably first referred, namely the returned exiles from Babylon, engaged in building up the walls of Jerusalem, and apt to be discouraged and disheartened in their work. This twofold reference to the returned exiles and to our Lord serves to illuminate the message of the Psalm, and show its relevance and its thrust in a very marked way. The immediate purpose of the Psalm is likely to have been, as commentators point out, 'To encourage the downhearted people who seemed to be encountering nothing but difficulties and disappointments', and it does so by recalling the mighty deeds of God wrought in the past, and reminding them that the same God is mighty still. In 1, 2 we are introduced immediately to the fact of the Exodus, by which Israel was delivered from a people of unintelligible language. But this is mentioned particularly in relation to what it led to, for Israel was constituted the people of God by the Exodus and were given a certain status, by which they came to be God's sacred possession, His sanctuary, the place in which He dwelt. This is the end-result of the redemption wrought by divine grace. And the New Testament counterpart and parallel to this is expressed gloriously in Ephesians 2:19-22, where the Church is spoken of as 'an habitation of God through the Spirit'. If this is true, if God has come to dwell in His people, then no pressure, no discouragement, can serve finally to bring down their spirits. This is the message of the Psalm.