Psalm 114:1-8
Sustaining Love

When Israel went forth out of Egypt,
       the house of Jacob from a people of foreign language;
Judah became his sanctuary,
       Israel his dominion.
The sea saw it, and fled.
       The Jordan was driven back.
The mountains skipped like rams,
       the little hills like lambs.
What was it, you sea, that you fled?
       You Jordan, that you turned back?
You mountains, that you skipped like rams;
       you little hills, like lambs?
Tremble, you earth, at the presence of the Lord,
       at the presence of the God of Jacob,
who turned the rock into a pool of water,
       the flint into a spring of waters.

World English Bible

Don't overlook the incredible imagery of this Psalm!

The most obvious imagery is the praise to God for the Exodus the escape of the Hebrew people under the leadership of Moses from the Egyptian armies. The miracle of the parting of the Red Sea to let the Hebrew people cross, and the coming together of the Red Sea to destroy the Egyptian army, was a glorious time in the history of Israel. They remembered that rescue every year while they remembered the Passover. When the Hebrews reached the Promised Land, God did it again, this time as the Jordan river parted and let the people cross. At the time of the psalms, seas and rivers represented evil and danger, so the psalmist describes the seas and rivers running from the goodness of God so that God's people would be saved.

We might miss the contrast beween the mountains and the seas if we're not careful. The mountains represented good because they approached heaven. In another psalm, we read that we look to the hills from where our salvation comes. In this psalm, we have the evil seas running in fear of God, while the righteous mountains and hills skip for joy. The hills dance with joyful abandon like young lambs in the spring!

In the final stanza, the psalmist recalls other miracles as the Hebrew people and Moses made their way to the Promised Land. The mountains trembling reference the scene when Moses received the ten commandments on top of Mt. Sinai and the mountain shook with earthquakes and fire and smoke ringed the top of the mountain. From the mighty and amazing miracles, the psamist includes small, practical, and essential gestures of love, as when God brought drinking water out of the rocks many times to sustain life in the hundreds of thousands of Hebrews traversing the desert.

The relevance of these historic miracles was obvious to the psalmist. The same God that brought the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land was the same God that was still sustaining Israel. The same is true today God's love still pours out all around us and sustains us!