1 When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language;
2Judah was his sanctuary, and Israel his dominion.
3 The seasaw it, and fled: Jordan was drivenback.
4 The mountainsskipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs.
5 What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest? thou Jordan, that thou wast drivenback?
6 Ye mountains, that ye skipped like rams; and ye little hills, like lambs?
7Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob;
8 Which turned the rock into a standingwater, the flint into a fountain of waters.
World Behind This Chapter
Explore the people, places, language, history, and material world connected to Psalms 114.
QUESTIONS WORTH EXPLORING
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What stands out about the Exodus retold through personified sea in Psalm 114?
Psalm 114 builds its movement around the Exodus retold through personified sea, Jordan, mountains, and trembling earth. Tracking repeated words, parallel lines, changes of speaker, and image clusters shows how the poem develops before assigning a later interpretation.
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What world does Psalm 114 ask the reader to picture?
The poem evokes sea, jordan, mountains, and earth. Those settings may be literal, remembered, ritual, or metaphorical; distinguishing those possibilities is part of reading Hebrew poetry carefully.
⌘Research PathsCurated links for exploring this chapter3
Map locating the Jordan River from its northern headwaters to the Dead Sea. It helps readers distinguish Psalm 114’s two water crossings—the sea during the Exodus and the Jordan at entry into the land—and understand how the poem compresses separate stages of Israel’s remembered journey.
Browser-readable chapter preview examining the tightly ordered structure of Psalm 114. It highlights the matching sequence of sea, Jordan, mountains, and hills in the poem’s two central sections and shows how repetition and personification create its memorable rhythm.
Chapter-specific literary study of Psalm 114’s compressed retelling of the Exodus, crossing of the Jordan, revelation at Sinai, and water from the rock. It examines the psalm’s missing explicit subject and argues that its opening may portray YHWH, not merely Israel, going out from Egypt.
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