"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
The rehearsal continues in 3, 4 with the events following the Passover - the dividing of the Red Sea and the crossing of the Jordan, marking the beginning of the journey through the wilderness and its ending respectively, and by implication, all that took place in between, accompanied by miraculous signs and wonders. The message is that all their experience was bounded, from beginning to end, by the activity of a wonderworking God. It was a message to the dispirited exiles that they were encompassed by the divine love and power in all their way, and a reminder to them that the God Who had brought them out of Babylon with a mighty hand would be with them in all the hazards and pressures and oppositions they might encounter. It is the kind of encouragement that was given to John on Patmos, in the wonderful expression, 'I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end', that is, all his experience was bounded by the unfailing Presence of the risen Lord - at the beginning and at the end and all the way through (cf Isaiah 43:1-3; 52:12). The message continues in 5, 6. The RSV seems to have the right of it when it renders 5 in the present tense: 'What ails you, O Sea, that you flee?' There is a great deal here for us, for in the use of the present tense, the Psalmist is not merely 'living in the past' as if it were present; on the contrary faith sees it all happening again in the present. That is the point that is being made. It is faith recognising and therefore seeing as accomplished - that as He did once, so He ever does, for His people, since He is the same yesterday, today and forever. In such a faith, it is not surprising to see the exuberance of spirit and the exultation that it begets in the Psalmist. Take the exulting spirit, the Psalm seems to say, into your discouraging situation. It is the pulse of victory beating in the Psalm that is so thrilling.