Psalm 114 Commentary

Last week our Psalm commentary was on Psalm 118, one of the options for Palm/Passion Sunday.  This week the Year C Easter Psalm is 118, the only option.  So for this commentary we will take up Psalm 114, which is the Psalm assigned for Easter evening.

Psalm 114 is in its own way a somewhat playful song.  Although only a short 8 verses in length, this psalm manages to summarize the exodus from Egypt and several subsequent miracles as witnessed by Israel after its release from bondage.

First we are told that after Israel / Jacob came out from Egypt, Judah and Israel became God’s sanctuary and dominion.  It is curious that the psalmist refers to both Judah and Israel since at the actual time of the exodus, the people were known as either the Hebrews or the Israelites.  Judah was one of the twelve tribes of Israel at the time but in general the totality of those tribes was known simply as Israel.  So the invocation of both Israel and Judah may be something of an anachronism here, reflecting the time after the reign of King Solomon when the once-unified nation of Israel split into the Northern Kingdom of Israel with its capital in Samaria and the Southern Kingdom of Judah with the capital of Jerusalem.

In any event, the notion in either case is that God dwelled with his people.  It is possible to speculate that the “sanctuary” idea—which may hark to the Temple—is applied only to Judah, which did still have Solomon’s Temple whereas Samaria to the north did not.  Israel is called just the “dominion” of God.  This might reflect a long-running dispute, one which is echoed all the way down to the New Testament when, in his encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus is asked if people could worship God from Samaria or if it could only be done from Jerusalem (as many did indeed claim).

Next up in verses 3-4 we see a kind of playful anthropomorphizing of the creation.  The reference to “the sea” is clearly the Red Sea where God miraculously parted the waters so that the Israelites could cross on dry ground and thus escape the clutches of the pursuing Egyptian army.  That miracle happened on Moses’s watch but the next water parting of the Jordan River took place under Moses’s successor, Joshua.  Here God is not said to be the active agent, however.  Instead these bodies of water are said to have “looked” at something and then then they are depicted as essentially running away, fleeing, as though frightened by something.  Verse 4 talks about mountains and hills in similar terms as the psalmist describes them as leaping like rams and lambs.  The precise reference here is less clear but it might refer to Mount Sinai and how the whole mountain seemed to be quaking and shaking at the giving of the Law.

But if all of that was somewhat playful in imagining bodies of water and land formations as having feelings and the ability to leap and skip, what comes next is even more playful.  The psalmist directly addresses the sea, the river, the mountains, the hills as though they can understand the question he wishes to pose.  “Why did you all do those things?” the poet asks.  “What made you act and react that way?”   Even though it is obvious that the psalmist was not expecting to receive an answer to these queries, these questions are even so clearly asked rhetorically.  The psalmist does not need an answer.  The reason is obvious: when the presence of Almighty God draws near to his Creation, the Creation is going to respond.  The Creation will do whatever the Creator God tells it to do.

This is why the psalm concludes with a call for all the earth to tremble in the presence of Israel’s one true God.  It is the presence of Almighty God that makes all the difference.  The psalm then concludes with two more references to some miracles Israel witnessed in the wilderness, including those times when God provided life-saving water from flinty stones and rocks.

But by now you may be wondering what in the world this all has to do with Easter.  Or maybe you have by now guessed it.  Because the death and resurrection of Jesus is in its own way our new and final exodus from sin and death.  What’s more, especially Israel’s crossing of the Red Sea has long been seen as a kind of prefiguring of baptism.  Indeed, the Reformed confessional document The Belgic Confession in its article on the sacrament of baptism refers to Jesus as “our Red Sea” through whom we pass from death into new life.

However since this is assigned for the evening of Easter itself, we can reflect on how the Creation is said to have reacted to the grandest miracle of them all: the resurrection from the dead.  Matthew in particular reports that when Jesus died there was a violent earthquake and then he also tells us the same happened at the moment the tomb split open.  The Creation reacts when the almighty power of God is brought near and never did that almighty power make a more dramatic impact on the world than when God the Father used his infinite power to crash through the stranglehold of death to bring new life through his Son Christ Jesus the Lord.

Our God is the God who brings life out of death, light out of darkness, water from flinty rocks, sustenance even through the dark wilderness valleys of this world.  The Creation knows how to react in response to the mighty power of God.  The one question that remains is do the rest of us know how to react to the Good News of Easter?  Can we, too, fall back in awe and trembling and wonder?  And once we recover from all that, can we praise this Almighty God for all that God has done both this day and forevermore?

“Christ is risen!  Risen indeed!”  Let all the earth tremble at this stunning news!

Illustration Idea

When we think about any kind of anthropomorphizing of the natural world, we are not likely to think first of all about the Bible.  Maybe we would think of Disney movies like Snow White in which birds and bunnies and other animals play apparently knowing parts in the film or Bambi including, obviously, the deer but who can forget good old Thumper the rabbit?  Or perhaps we would go to Pixar movies where all kinds of otherwise inanimate or non-conscious or non-speaking creatures do indeed speak: toys, fish, cars, stuffed animals.  Or maybe we think of the talking trees or the Ents in Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.  Or all those old classic Looney Tunes creatures like Porky Pig, Foghorn Leghorn, Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny.

Well, the Bible never goes anywhere near that far (Balaam’s talking donkey notwithstanding!).  However the Bible in especially the Book of Psalms but also in some of the prophetic books (particularly Isaiah) frequently addresses the non-human creation almost as though they can understand human speech and are capable of some kind of response.  Yes, some psalms command people to praise Yahweh, the God of Israel, but the exact same command is issued to wind and hail, snow and rain, sea creatures and birds.  What’s more, Isaiah memorably pictures the clacking of tree branches as being like a joyful round of applause for Israel’s God even as we often read of hills and mountains as much as leaping for joy before their Creator.

Is all of that just poetic license?  Metaphors?  Maybe.  Or perhaps it is also meant to point to how close God is to God’s created handiwork and the deep connection between Creator and Creation.